Todd offered the hospitalities of a single
meal, we were quite by ourselves all summer; and when there were
signs of invasion, late in July, and a certain Mrs. Fosdick
appeared like a strange sail on the far horizon, I suffered much
from apprehension. I had been living in the quaint little house
with as much comfort and unconsciousness as if it were a larger
body, or a double shell, in whose simple convolutions Mrs. Todd and
I had secreted ourselves, until some wandering hermit crab of a
visitor marked the little spare room for her own. Perhaps now and
then a castaway on a lonely desert island dreads the thought of
being rescued. I heard of Mrs. Fosdick for the first time with a
selfish sense of objection; but after all, I was still vacation-
tenant of the schoolhouse, where I could always be alone, and it
was impossible not to sympathize with Mrs. Todd, who, in spite of
some preliminary grumbling, was really delighted with the prospect
of entertaining an old friend.
For nearly a month we received occasional news of Mrs.
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