Page:Middle Aged Love Stories (IA middleagedlove00bacorich).djvu/78

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unmixed delight to her lodger and a great spiritual discipline to herself.

As the days grew milder their intimacy, profiting by the winter seclusion, led him to accompany her on her various errands. She was at first unwilling to accept his escort—it too clearly resembled a tacit consent to his idleness. But his quiet persistence, together with his evident cynicism as to the results of these professional tours, accomplished, as usual, his end; and the wondering village might observe on hot June mornings its benefactress, languidly accompanied by a slender man in white flannels, balancing a large white green-lined umbrella, picking his way daintily along the dusty paths, with a covered basket dangling from one hand and a gray-green volume distending one white pocket.

There was material, too, for the interested observer in the picture of Miss Gould distributing reading matter, fruit, and lectures on household economy in