"You're very kind, Ralph. I can't tell _you_ what a pleasure it was to
come, and I'm not going to let the trouble I'm giving spoil my pleasure."
"Well, that's right," said Putney. "_We_ sha'n't either." He took out
a cigar and put it into his mouth. "It's only a dry smoke. Ellen makes
me let up on my chewing when we have company, and I must have something
in my mouth, so I get a cigar. It's a sort of compromise. I'm a terribly
nervous man, Annie; you can't imagine. If it wasn't for the grace of God,
I think I should fly to pieces sometimes. But I guess that's what holds me
together--that and Winthy here. I dropped him on the stairs out there, when
I was drunk, one night. I saw you looking at them; I suppose you've been
told; it's all right. I presume the Almighty knows what He's about; but
sometimes He appears to save at the spigot and waste at the bung-hole, like
the rest of us. He let me cripple my boy to reform me."
"Don't, Ralph!" said Annie, with a voice of low entreaty. She turned and
spoke to the child, and asked him if he would not come to see her.
"What?" he asked, breaking with a sort of absent-minded start from his
intentness upon his father's words.
She repeated her invitation.
"Thanks!" he said, in the prompt, clear little pipe which startles by
its distinctness and decision on the lips of crippled children. "I guess
father'll bring me some day. Don't you want I should go out and tell mother
she's here?" he asked his father.
"Well, if you want to, Winthrop," said his father.
The boy swung himself lightly out of the room on his crutches, and his
father turned to her. "Well, how does Hatboro' strike you, anyway, Annie?
You needn't mind being honest with me, you know."
He did not give her a chance to say, and she was willing to let him talk
on, and tell her what he thought of Hatboro' himself. "Well, it's like
every other place in the world, at every moment of history--it's in a
transition state. The theory is, you know, that most places are at a
standstill the greatest part of the time; they haven't begun to move, or
they've stopped moving; but I guess that's a mistake; they're moving all
the while. I suppose Rome itself was in a transition state when you left?"
"Oh, very decidedly. It had ceased to be old and was becoming new."