In the course of that incredible day Charity Royall had, for the first
and only time, experienced railway-travel, looked into shops with
plate-glass fronts, tasted cocoanut pie, sat in a theatre, and listened
to a gentleman saying unintelligible things before pictures that she
would have enjoyed looking at if his explanations had not prevented her
from understanding them. This initiation had shown her that North Dormer
was a small place, and developed in her a thirst for information that
her position as custodian of the village library had previously failed
to excite. For a month or two she dipped feverishly and disconnectedly
into the dusty volumes of the Hatchard Memorial Library; then the
impression of Nettleton began to fade, and she found it easier to take
North Dormer as the norm of the universe than to go on reading.
The sight of the stranger once more revived memories of Nettleton, and
North Dormer shrank to its real size. As she looked up and down it, from
lawyer Royall's faded red house at one end to the white church at the
other, she pitilessly took its measure.
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