The Blythes Are Quoted Read Online Free Page A

was never particularly fond of Edna. And the Field pride might find it too hard to swallow a Pollock alliance. Besides ... Lucia can play on the violin.”
    “I could never believe such a thing of Miss Field.”
    “No, I don’t think I could, either. And what Mrs. Blythe would do to me, old as I am, if I hinted such a thing to her, I don’t really know. And I don’t really know much about Miss Field. She hasn’t taken any part in the church work ... well, I suppose she couldn’t. But it is hard to kill an insinuation. I have fought and ousted many a lie, Mr. Burns, but some insinuations have beaten me. Lucia is a reserved little thing ... I really think Mrs. Blythe is the only intimate friend shehas ... perhaps I am too old to get acquainted with her. Well, I’ve told you all I know about our mystery. No doubt there are others who could tell you much more. If you can put up with Long Alec’s spooks until Mrs. Richards’ recovery there is no reason why you shouldn’t be very comfortable. I know Alice will be glad to have you there. She worries over the mystery ... she thinks it keeps people away ... well, of course it does, more or less ... and she’s fond of company, poor girl. Besides, she’s very nervous about the goings-on. I hope I haven’t made you nervous.”
    “No ... you have interested me. I believe there is some quite simple solution.”
    “And you also believe that everything has been greatly exaggerated? Oh, not by me ... I acquit you of that ... but by my gossiping parishioners. Well, I daresay there has been a good deal of exaggeration. Stories can grow to huge proportions in five years and we country folks are very fond of a spice of the dramatic. Twice two making four is dull but twice two making five is exciting ... as Mrs. Blythe says. But my hard-headed deacon, old Malcolm Dinwoodie, heard Winthrop Field talking in the parlour there one night ... years after he had been buried. Nobody who had once heard Winthrop Field’s peculiar voice could mistake it ... or the little nervous laugh he always ended up with.”
    “But I thought it was Anna Marsh’s ghost that was supposed to ‘walk’?”
    “Well, her voice has been heard, too. I am not going to talk any more about this! You will think me a doddering idiot. Perhaps you won’t be so sure when you have lived in that house for a while. And perhaps the spook will respect the cloth and behave while you are there. Perhaps you may even find out the truth.”
    “Mr. Sheldon is a saint and a better man and minister than I will ever be,” mused Curtis, as he walked across the road to his boarding place. “But the old fellow believes Long Alec’s house is haunted ... he couldn’t hide that in spite of the raspberry vinegar. Well, here’s for a bout with the ghosts. I will have a talk with Dr. Blythe about it. And twice two is four.”
    He looked behind him at his little church ... a tranquil old grey building among sunken graves and mossy gravestones under the sharp silvery sky of late evening. Beside it was the parsonage, a nice chubby old house built when stone was cheaper than lumber or brick. It looked lonely and appealing. Directly across the road from it was the “old Field place.” The wide, rather low house, with its many porches, had an odd resemblance to a motherly old hen, with little chickens peeping out from under her breast and wings. There was a peculiar arrangement of dormer windows in the roof. The window of a room in the main house was at right angles to one in the “el” and was so close to it that people could have shaken hands from window to window. There was something about this architectural trick that pleased Curtis. It gave the roof an individuality. Some great spruce trees grew about it, stretching their boughs around it lovingly. The whole place had atmosphere, charm, suggestion. As an old aunt of Curtis Burns would have said,
    “There’s family behind that.”
    Virginia creeper rioted over the porches.