There was a sad heart in the low-storied, dark little house that stood
humbly by the roadside under some tall elms. Small as her house was,
old Mrs. Robb found it too large for herself alone; she only needed the
kitchen and a tiny bedroom that led out of it, and there still remained
the best room and a bedroom, with the low garret overhead.
There had been a time, after she was left alone, when Mrs. Robb could
help those who were poorer than herself. She was strong enough not
only to do a woman's work inside her house, but almost a man's work
outside in her piece of garden ground. At last sickness and age had
come hand in hand, those two relentless enemies of the poor, and
together they had wasted her strength and substance. She had always
been looked up to by her neighbors as being independent, but now she
was left, lame-footed and lame-handed, with a debt to carry and her
bare land, and the house ill-provisioned to stand the siege of time.
For a while she managed to get on, but at last it began to be whispered
about that there was no use for any one so proud; it was easier for the
whole town to care for her than for a few neighbors, and Mrs. Robb had
better go to the poorhouse before winter, and be done with it. At this
terrible suggestion her brave heart seemed to stand still. The people
whom she cared for most happened to be poor, and she could no longer go
into their households to make herself of use. The very elms overhead
seemed to say, "Oh, no!" as they groaned in the late autumn winds, and
there was something appealing even to the strange passer-by in the look
of the little gray house, with Mrs. Robb's pale, worried face at the
window.