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“Though he’s become one now. He hasn’t come into town for months and months. It’s become a kind of dare among the boys in town, to go hunting for a glimpse of the last man left in Dogtown.
“I’ve always felt sorry for him,” said Polly. “I’m not sure I ever met anyone so lonesome.” She peeked at Judy’s face as she bit off a thread. “Don’t you feel sorry for him?”
“Well, of course I do,” said Judy, and she got up to see that the table was laid out properly for dinner.
August ended, the guests departed, and the house itself seemed to sigh with relief. The evening before the Judge left, he called Judy to the study and handed her an en-velope. “A token of my appreciation for a wonderful summer.” He rose and took her hand. “I hope that you will stay with us for years to come. For now, however, I want you to take your ease. We quite wore you out these past months. I order you to have a good rest, Mistress Rhines. It’s well deserved.”
Harriet Plant departed in a shower of tearful kisses, having exacted a promise of regular correspondence from Judy. On the way to the coach, she pouted, “I don’t see why you won’t spend Christmas with me in Cambridge.”
“Perhaps I will,” said Judy.
When Judy returned to the empty house, she clapped her hands at the pleasure of having it all to herself again.
She moved her clothes back upstairs to the high ceilings and windows she’d missed all summer, and then strolled through the quiet rooms, stopping in the library, where she
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emptied the dregs of the Judge’s sherry into a crystal glass, put up her feet, and watched the sunset turn the harbor into a pink punch bowl. The great clock ticked while the gulls became black apostrophes against the line of one endless lavender cloud that stretched to the horizon.
After a few more busy weeks—washing and mending, airing and folding—Judy paid off the maids and became a lady of leisure, just as the Judge had suggested. She lounged in bed until nine in the morning, drinking tea and reading novels. After lunch, she set to work, draping the furniture and closing up the drawing room, the dining room, and all the bedrooms save hers. As September ended, she had the gardener shutter the windows for winter. The darkened house saddened her a little, but it would save on dusting and preserve the carpets, she told herself. And as the days grew shorter and cooler, every week provided extra hours to read and rest and to imagine that this was the life she was meant for. As she drew a satin coverlet over her shoulders at night, her years in the rustic Dogtown cottage seemed like a detour or a bad dream.
That same house had become Cornelius’s paramount blessing. His sorrowful mood had lifted with the lengthen-ing days, and he spent the summer cleaning and mending until the place was back in good order. He lived more quietly than ever, eating the small game he caught and harvesting the volunteer beans and squash that grew in the abandoned kitchen gardens of Dogtown.
Oliver had brought him a good price for the pile of
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wooden blocks that had kept him from cutting his own wrists. Cornelius had welcomed him back that day with a cup of rose hip tea, and he agreed to Oliver’s suggestion that he try carving whales on the next ones.
When his visitor made to leave, Cornelius offered his hand, looked him in the eye, and said, “You’re a good man.”
Oliver was flustered by the unexpected praise, shook his hand, and promised, “I’ll be back.”
When he told Polly what Cornelius had said to him, she smiled and said, “He’s right.”
Oliver tried to get back to Dogtown every fortnight if he could, trading oil, tea, and meal for pelts or mallows or whatever Cornelius had on hand. After they did their business, the two men said little, but Cornelius would not let Oliver leave without taking a cup of the broth or stew he seemed always to have on the fire. The concoction warmed Oliver like nothing he’d ever tasted, and he looked forward to it as he walked up the Dogtown road, especially as the days grew colder again.
That December, an early snow fell steadily for three solid days and three nights. In Gloucester, wagons could not pass and almost no one ventured outdoors. The scene outside of Judy’s windows was peaceful and beautiful, but by the end of the third day, she was starting to feel trapped and lonely in a way she never had in Dogtown. The knock on the kitchen door felt like a gift and she threw it wide, hoping for Oliver, who sometimes dropped by at that hour on his way home.
But the expression that greeted her was so pinched and grim, Judy cried, “Has something happened to one of the boys?”
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