Vermont phÅ“nix. [volume] (Brattleboro, Vt.) 1834-1955, 1886-02-19
IN 4 GARRET.

IN 4 GARRETT.
1t happened only last September and l
think you do not know her. l should not,
but for my old aunt Abby but now often
look at her when | meet her in the street, in
her faded black gowns it bombazine or in
it alpaca that is 30 limp aud dingy and
worn-out and looks like mourning tired with
too many years wearing. Happily her face
bellies its frame she has a sweet face, still
pretty, and very fresh and smooth and quiet.
Aunt Abby says she ia far from poor she
knows her as working in some old charities,
TO which she gives much money. l asked
about her when heard it, and found out
more than any one knows, although this is q
true story.
The house was on a court but at least it
had the court to itself Garden street leaves
Hutchinson street and runs down towards the
water behind the jail, through what used to
be the Mlllpond, district now filled in with
the scum Of humanity. After you leave
Cambridge street you go between q line OF
houses, ordinary enough two. and la half. story
bricks, with the doorway in an arched cell,
and often pasteboard placsrd in the win.
dow, 'Rt US to Let, with Board" The
Easements are usually filed with shoemakers
or grocers, aud here and there an undertaken
with red ticket in the window, Ice" By
aud by you sse that the houses are older by
the bind" Of the bricks, laying the ends and
sides Of the bricks alternating and not in
our monotonous modern way. The basement
windows make display Of round bundles OF
kindlng- g-wood and square cakes of popped
corn cementtd with treacle. Even these
houses have seen better days. Occasionally
you may note a large arched front door with
fan-light OF glass over 1t, or the frieze Of q
house moulded in little wooden squares
there is an old wooden sign OF a Saracen or
other painted heather perched on a bracket
above door where a negro politician keeps
pool-room. Aud just before you get to a
corner where there Is gin-shop and fash
ionable dress-mAker, you turn up TO the left
into Garden Court, of which the wall on one
side is made by mossy wooden building
skrtng discolored bit of grass, where there
is an elm and a skinned and moribund syca.
more. Miss Allerton's house faces upon this
bit of grass, presenting to it yellow fec lde
with two gables, and only an edge to the
street. The house would seem to have turn.
ed a cold shoulder to the street since it took
to evil company. In the southernmost OF the
two gables Is the garret in which Miss Aller-
ton sat. There is a bedroom in the end to-
wards the street: the gable does not run
clear through the house, but stops and sinks
down into sloping roof with dormer win
dow in it. This is the Rarret window it
looks towards the river and you can still see
q rood or 30 OF green water between the piles
of the drawbridge and the Fitchburg railway
station.
A pleasant face had Miss Allerton "a very
pleasant face, with the soft gray hair and the
kind wrinkles near the eyes. There was
spinning wheel near her, and row of old
chests; fre-irons, a pompous old
ell 81
bueket 12n old wig and doubtless many other
family relics, were slowed away in the boxes
about her. y The lozenge. shaped frame of
some old dovaeeE ,Allerton's hatchment was
leaning with its face TO the wall, falling to
pieces, slowly, with tia insepArable air of
leisure and dignity that Atssehes to things
which have outiived their use. =, hl'ss Aller-
ton, too, had been thinking that shsN mao out
lived her use, and she looked vaoantfY 81 40
old leather bag hanging on q nail in the SAil'
evidently empty. The leather bag had hum
there many year, but she had never noticed
it before. Then she looked out OF the little
dormer window, and over to the wharves, and
the factories, aud the rows of wooden houses,
and the dirty river slipping through its grove
of piles, and all the horizon OF huddied
houses, where she remembered green mead.
ows and wooded bills and blue river, when
her eyes we're blue, not gray, nor meant for
use alone.
She paused to assure herself that she was
not unhappy. Surely not-even in the gar
ret there, looking out on the damp, dull
weather a little lonely, that was all. And
she had had so many friends Then she re-
membered-what woman ever forgets "a
fair girl she had known, about the time La
fayette came to town, who was very pretty,
sweetly, dearly pretty. 1t was odd to think
i'll haA
vanity in remembering this, for it did not
seem to be herself, rather some daughter of
hers who had long been dead. Only she
never had any children. Then, her father,
the judge, the proud old gentleman whom
all the little provincial city had known and
liked to honor, there were so few people
left in town now, although it had grown 30
large. Somewhat too proud indeed was he,
she thought with a sigh, in the days when
the crowded wooden house was a mansion
with a garden that stretched back to the
square old stone houses of their friends in
Bowdoin Square. After all, the time might
come when she would have to leave the old
house, old and unfsshionable as it was for
the family fortune had grown out of fashion
too, and the square brick warehouses we're
out of date and yielded but little rent now
and she had never had the heart to cut down
her list of charities. She had thought the
fortune would outast her time but she had
lived too long. Not that she cared much for
the fortune, but her friends had often told
her that she must move the street was no
longer respectable. After all, though, it was
not so very lonely there. She liked better
than another place. But 1t was dreary Sep
tember day it was the equinootial, there
was no doubt of that just such day as it
had been in that September in 1882 when her
father, the stern old judge, had come home
and told her.
Yetit was strange; it still seemed as strange
as 1t did on that first day. 1t had never been
explained. He surely had loved her she
had thought 80 on that very first day of all,
when the young stranger was introduced to
her at her fathers friends at tea party. How
near, too, she had been giving up the tea
party that night She had a headache from
the ball the night before, and she was proud
young beauty, and there was going to be no
one there but a new clerk of Mr.. divers,
some young man who had come North from
the Carolinas, or from some sugar plantation
in Barbadoes.. He certainly was attracted by
her that night and he asked permission to
accompany her home, and her father refused
it, Yes her father had been born among
the colonial aristocracy, and he was very
proud.
But she had tried to make it all up, so far
as she modestly could he was not used to
her fathers ways, but he was frank, ingen-
uous young gentleman, who had won his way
with every one. Only, he had been very shy,
and very much afraid of her, and very mod.
est. II bad been a twelvemonth before she
had blushsd when they met, 30 gentle had he
been in his wooiug, and then year again be-
fore he dared to take her hand aud look at
her and leave her as he did that night of the
election. Aud then, of course, sue had sup
posed that he would come to see her father
the next day and every one spoke we'll Of
him by that time, every one, even her faith.
er, the old judge. But he had never come.
Aud the next day (or was 1t week after y
her father-it was just such q day as this,
with the mist, and the damp, and the wind