One evening in June, a single passenger landed upon the steamboat
wharf. The tide was high, there was a fine crowd of spectators,
and the younger portion of the company followed her with subdued
excitement up the narrow street of the salt-aired, white-
clapboarded little town.
II
Mrs. Todd
LATER, THERE WAS only one fault to find with this choice of a
summer lodging-place, and that was its complete lack of seclusion.
At first the tiny house of Mrs. Almira Todd, which stood with its
end to the street, appeared to be retired and sheltered enough from
the busy world, behind its bushy bit of a green garden, in which
all the blooming things, two or three gay hollyhocks and some
London-pride, were pushed back against the gray-shingled wall. It
was a queer little garden and puzzling to a stranger, the few
flowers being put at a disadvantage by so much greenery; but the
discovery was soon made that Mrs. Todd was an ardent lover of
herbs, both wild and tame, and the sea-breezes blew into the low
end-window of the house laden with not only sweet-brier and sweet-
mary, but balm and sage and borage and mint, wormwood and
southernwood.
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