One of them, toward the last, said
that a shadow kept moving to and fro in the room, and kept the sunshine
all away. The woman who had seen the vision of the old doctor became a
widow the next month, and so much sickness and death took place in the
house that at last no one would live there, and it was shut up by its
owner.
In due course of time the father and mother of Sophonisba and Faithful
were laid in Dorchester burial-ground. Mr. T---- had never been a rich man
by any means, and when he died there was little left for the two girls,
even after the sale of the homestead. They did not, however, consider
themselves poor, but with their fifteen hundred dollars in the bank and
their trade of milliner and dressmaker thought themselves very well to do
in the world. Sophonisba, the elder, was at that time a little under
fifty--an energetic, hard-working woman, with a constitution of wrought
iron and bend leather, and no more under the influence of what are called
"nerves" than if they had been left out of her system entirely. If ever a
woman was born into this world an old maid, it was Sophonisba T----. Her
fine name was the only romantic thing about her. She had had more than one
offer of marriage in her day, but she had no talent for matrimony, and had
turned such a very cold shoulder on her admirers that the swains became
dispirited, and betook themselves to the courtship of more impressible
damsels.
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