Anne stepped off the train at Valley Road station and looked about to see if any one had come to meet her. She was to board with a certain Miss Janet Sweet, but she saw no one who answered in the least to her preconception of that lady, as formed from Esther’s letter. The only person in sight was an elderly woman, sitting in a wagon with mail bags piled around her. Two hundred would have been a charitable guess at her weight; her face was as round and red as a harvest-moon and almost as featureless. She wore a tight, black, cashmere dress, made in the fashion of ten years ago, a little dusty black straw hat trimmed with bows of yellow ribbon, and faded black lace mits. “Here, you,” she called, waving her whip at Anne. “Are you the new Valley Road schoolma’am?”
“Yes.”
“Well, I thought so. Valley Road is noted for its good-looking schoolma’ams, just as Millersville is noted for its humly ones. Janet Sweet asked me this morning if I could bring you out. I said, ‘Sartin I kin, if she don’t mind being scrunched up some. This rig of mine’s kinder small for the mail bags and I’m some heftier than Thomas!’ Just wait, miss, till I shift these bags a bit and I’ll tuck you in somehow. It’s only two miles to Janet’s. Her next-door neighbor’s hired boy is coming for your trunk tonight. My name is Skinner—Amelia Skinner.”
Anne was eventually tucked in, exchanging amused smiles with herself during the process.
“Jog along, black mare,” commanded Mrs. Skinner, gathering up the reins in her pudgy hands. “This is my first trip on the mail rowte. Thomas wanted to hoe his turnips today so he asked me to come. So I jest sot down and took a standing-up snack and started. I sorter like it. O’ course it’s rather tejus. Part of the time I sits and thinks and the rest I jest sits. Jog along, black mare. I want to git home airly. Thomas is terrible lonesome when I’m away. You see, we haven’t been married very long.”
“Oh!” said Anne politely.
“Just a month. Thomas courted me for quite a spell, though. It was real romantic.” Anne tried to picture Mrs. Skinner on speaking terms with romance and failed.
“Oh?” she said again.
“Yes. Y’see, there was another man after me. Jog along, black mare. I’d been a widder so long folks had given up expecting me to marry again. But when my darter—she’s a schoolma’am like you—went out West to teach I felt real lonesome and wasn’t nowise sot against the idea. Bime-by Thomas began to come up and so did the other feller—William Obadiah Seaman, his name was. For a long time I couldn’t make up my mind which of them to take, and they kep’ coming and coming, and I kep’ worrying. Y’see, W.O. was rich—he had a fine place and carried considerable style. He was by far the best match. Jog along, black mare.”
“Why didn’t you marry him?” asked Anne.
“Well, y’see, he didn’t love me,” answered Mrs. Skinner, solemnly.
Anne opened her eyes widely and looked at Mrs. Skinner. But there was not a glint of humor on that lady’s face. Evidently Mrs. Skinner saw nothing amusing in her own case.
“He’d been a widder-man for three yers, and his sister kept house for him. Then she got married a............