At any rate, his hours there were
not much longer or more regular than Charity's at the library; the rest
of the time he spent either at the store or in driving about the country
on business connected with the insurance companies that he represented,
or in sitting at home reading Bancroft's History of the United States
and the speeches of Daniel Webster.
Since the day when Charity had told him that she wished to succeed
to Eudora Skeff's post their relations had undefinably but definitely
changed. Lawyer Royall had kept his word. He had obtained the place for
her at the cost of considerable maneuvering, as she guessed from the
number of rival candidates, and from the acerbity with which two of
them, Orma Fry and the eldest Targatt girl, treated her for nearly a
year afterward. And he had engaged Verena Marsh to come up from
Creston and do the cooking. Verena was a poor old widow, doddering and
shiftless: Charity suspected that she came for her keep. Mr. Royall was
too close a man to give a dollar a day to a smart girl when he could
get a deaf pauper for nothing.
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