No more conversation was had upon the subject at that time. The
professor went down to his breakfast, and, having disposed of it with
good appetite, and smoked his morning-pipe with quiet satisfaction,
Michael brought Dolly and the wagon round to the front door, the old
gentleman clambered in, and off they rattled to Abbie's boarding-house.
This "Abbie," as she was called in the village--indeed, not more than
one in a hundred knew her other name--had long been an institution among
the townspeople. When she first became a resident was uncertain: some
said more, some less than twenty years ago. Certain it was, at all
events, that she had grown, during her sojourn there, from a young and
comely, though sober-faced woman, to considerably more than middle age;
though time had perhaps used her less kindly than most women in her
situation in life, which is saying a good deal. No one could tell where
she came from, or what her previous life had been. She had first made
her appearance as purchaser of the house in which she had ever since
lived, and kept boarders. She was uncommunicative, without seeming
offensively reserved; quietly tenacious of her rights, though far from
grasping or aggressive, and was endowed with decided executive ability.
She had made a most unexceptionable landlady; one or two of her
boarders had been with her almost since the inception of her enterprise;
while all the better class of transient visitors to the village, which
had a moderate popularity as a summer resort, made their first
application for rooms to her.
Some ten or twelve years after her establishment, Professor Valeyon and
his family had moved into town. They had not taken up their quarters at
Abbie's, though she could easily have accommodated them, as far as room
went; a circumstance which caused all the more surprise in some
quarters, because there seemed to have been some previous acquaintance
between herself and the professor. But Abbie was even less talkative
upon this than upon other subjects; and no one ventured to catechise the
grave and forcible-looking man who was the only other source of possible
information. After a time, he settled in the house which subsequently
became the parsonage; and, since no particular relations were kept up
between his family and the boarding-house keeper, curiosity and comment
died a natural death, and it even came to be doubted whether they ever
had met each other before, after all.
Abbie, at the present time, was a taciturn personage, neither tall nor
short, stout nor thin. Her eyebrows were straight and strongly marked,
and much darker than her hair, which, indeed, had begun to turn gray
several years before. There was nothing especially noticeable in her
other features, except that the lips were habitually compressed, and the
chin so square-cut and firm as to be almost masculine. A good many
little wrinkles could be traced around the mouth, and at the corners of
the eyes, especially when she was much depressed; and sometimes her
expression was very hard and stern. Her manners were quite
undemonstrative; they seemed to be neither fastidious nor the reverse,
and it would have been hard to predicate from them in what station of
life she had been brought up. She certainly adapted herself well to
whatever society she happened to be with; neither patricians nor
plebeians found any thing to criticise; but, whether this were the
result of tact, or owing merely to the adoption of a negative standard,
no one could say. In language she was uniformly correct, without seeming
at all scholastic; she occasionally used the idioms and dialectic
peculiarities of those around her, though never with the air of being
heedlessly betrayed into them.