Black told herself.
She was still revolving this in her mind as she walked sedately along
the street, the red and yellow striped bag clasped tightly in both
hands. Of course everybody in the village would suppose she knew all
about Lydia Orr. But the fact was she knew very little. The week
before, one of her customers in Grenoble, in the course of a business
transaction which involved a pair of chickens, a dozen eggs and two
boxes of strawberries, had asked, in a casual way, if Mrs. Black knew
any one in Brookville who kept boarders.
"The minister of our church boards with me," she told the Grenoble
woman, with pardonable pride. "I don't know of anybody else that
takes boarders in Brookville." She added that she had an extra room.
"Well, one of my boarders--a real nice young lady from Boston--has
taken a queer notion to board in Brookville," said the woman. "She
was out autoing the other day and went through there. I guess the
country 'round Brookville must be real pretty this time of year."
"Yes; it is, real pretty," she had told the Grenoble woman.
And this had been the simple prelude to Lydia Orr's appearance in
Brookville.
Wooded hills did not interest Mrs. Black, nor did the meandering of
the silver river through its narrow valley. But she took an honest
pride in her own freshly painted white house with its vividly green
blinds, and in her front yard with its prim rows of annuals and
thrifty young dahlias. As for Miss Lydia Orr's girlish rapture over
the view from her bedroom window, so long as it was productive of
honestly earned dollars, Mrs.
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