CHAPTER I.
LEGACY AND LEGATEE
Marsden was one of the few villages of our populous country yet left remote from any line of railway. The chief events of its quiet days were the morning and evening arrivals and departures of the mail-coach, whose driver still retained the almost obsolete custom of blowing a horn to signal his approach.
All Marsden favored the horn, it was so convenient and so – so antique! which word typified the spirit of the place. For if modest Marsden had any pride, it was in its own unchanging attitude toward modern ways and methods. So, whenever Reuben Smith's trumpet was heard, the villagers knew it was time to leave their homes along the main street and repair to the "general store and post-office" for the mail, which was their strongest connecting link with the outside world.
Occasionally, too, the coach brought a visitor to the village; though this was commonly in summer-time, when even its own stand-offishness could not wholly repel the "city boarder." After the leaves changed color, nobody went to and fro save those who "belonged," as the storekeeper, the milliner, and Squire Pettijohn, the lawyer; and it had been ten years, at least, since Reuben's four-in-hand was brought to a halt before Miss Eunice Maitland's gate. Now, on a windy day of late September, the two white horses and their two black companions were reined up there, while the trumpet gave a blast which startled the entire neighborhood.
"My heart was in my mouth the minute I heard it!" declared the Widow Sprigg to a crony, later on; although this curious disarrangement of her anatomy did not prevent the good woman from being foremost at the gate to learn the cause of this salute, thus rudely anticipating her mistress's rights in the case. Therefore, it was upon a time-damaged, cap-frilled countenance that Katharine Maitland's dismayed glance fell as she sprang from the stage and inquired:
"Are you my Aunt Eunice?"
"Your – Aunt – Eunice! Thank my stars, I ain't aunt to nobody!" returned the widow, almost as much alarmed by the appearance of this strange maiden as she had been by the coachman's blast.
"It is a matter of thankfulness," retorted the girl, pertly, and surveying the other with amused and critical eyes, which made Susanna Sprigg "squirm in her shoes."
Reuben now slowly climbed down from his high seat, and removed from the rumble a great trunk, a suit-case, a parcel of books, and a dog-basket; and the stranger at once occupied herself in releasing from his confined quarters a pug so atrociously high-bred that Susanna instantly exclaimed:
"My stars! That dog's so humbly he must ache!"
Katharine would have given a crisp reply had not her attention been distracted by Reuben's movements, who was waiting to receive his fare, yet in such terror of the pug's snapping jaws that he was stepping up and down in a lively fashion, as he rescued one foot and then the other from his enemy's attack.
"'Pears to blame me for bein' shut up in that there basket, don't he? When anybody knows 'twasn't my fault at all. I hain't enj'yed the trip no more'n what he has, hearin' him yelp that continual, an' I must say I didn't expect, at my time o' life, to commence drivin' stage for dogs. Here, sis, is your change. Good day to ye, an' a good welcome, I hope."
"Humph! You don't speak as if you really 'hoped' it, but quite the reverse!" returned Punch's mistress, more shrewdly than courteously.
"Dreadful smart, ain't ye?" said Reuben, and drove away, putting his horn to his lips, and thereby drowning any further remarks which the stranger might have addressed to him.
Lifting the ungainly brute in her arms, the girl now turned and surveyed the house beyond the gate, her heart far heavier with homesickness than seemed consistent with her outward, flippant bearing.
What she saw was a wide, rambling frame house; wherever they showed between the clambering vines which encircled it, its clapboards glistening white and its shutters vividly green. The few leaves still left upon the vines were scarlet, while behind the low roof rose maples in the full glory of their autumn reds and yellows. The long front yard was green and well kept, and the borders beside the path were gay with chrysanthemums, though between these showed the frost-blackened foliage of tenderer plants. Upon the porch was a woman with a shawl over her head, apparently shivering in the wind which tossed the maple boughs, and awaiting an explanation of this arrival.
"A pretty picture!" admitted Katharine, who fancied herself artistic, "but so lonesome it gives me the hypo! And that – that, I suppose, is my Aunt Eunice. Well, Punch, come on! Let's get it over with!"
The Widow Sprigg had remained motionless, but keenly observant, and her thoughts were:
"If that ain't a Maitland, I never knew the breed. And I reckon I do know it, bein's me an' my fam'ly has lived cheek by jowl with them an' their fam'ly since ever was. But which Maitland it is, or what in reason she's come for, beats me."
Then, as the stranger walked coolly through the gateway, leaving her luggage on the sidewalk outside, Susanna sniffed, and remarked – for anybody to hear who chose:
