Fosdick had been the mother of a
large family of sons and daughters,--sailors and sailors' wives,--
and most of them had died before her. I soon grew more or less
acquainted with the histories of all their fortunes and
misfortunes, and subjects of an intimate nature were no more
withheld from my ears than if I had been a shell on the
mantelpiece. Mrs. Fosdick was not without a touch of dignity and
elegance; she was fashionable in her dress, but it was a curiously
well-preserved provincial fashion of some years back. In a wider
sphere one might have called her a woman of the world, with her
unexpected bits of modern knowledge, but Mrs. Todd's wisdom was an
intimation of truth itself. She might belong to any age, like an
idyl of Theocritus; but while she always understood Mrs. Fosdick,
that entertaining pilgrim could not always understand Mrs. Todd.
That very first evening my friends plunged into a borderless
sea of reminiscences and personal news. Mrs. Fosdick had been
staying with a family who owned the farm where she was born, and
she had visited every sunny knoll and shady field corner; but when
she said that it might be for the last time, I detected in her tone
something expectant of the contradiction which Mrs.
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