Edith Wharton - Penn State University

SummerIIIto imparting his views to his fellow-townsmen; perhaps,also, he was unwilling that his rare clients should surpriseIT WAS NOT IN THE ROOM known at the red house as Mr. him sitting, clerkless and unoccupied, in his dusty office.Royall’s “office” that he received his infrequent clients. At any rate, his hours there were not much longer or moreProfessional dignity and masculine independence made it regular than Charity’s at the library; the rest of the time henecessary that he should have a real office, under a differentroof; and his standing as the only lawyer of North business connected with the insurance companies that hespent either at the store or in driving about the country onDormer required that the roof should be the same as that represented, or in sitting at home reading Bancroft’s Historyof the United States and the speeches of Danielwhich sheltered the Town Hall and the post-office.It was his habit to walk to this office twice a day, morningand afternoon. It was on the ground floor of the build-Since the day when Charity had told him that she wishedWebster.ing, with a separate entrance, and a weathered name-plate to succeed to Eudora Skeff’s post their relations hadon the door. Before going in he stepped in to the postofficefor his mail—usually an empty ceremony—said a kept his word. He had obtained the place for her at theundefinably but definitely changed. Lawyer Royall hadword or two to the town-clerk, who sat across the passage cost of considerable maneuvering, as she guessed fromin idle state, and then went over to the store on the oppositecorner, where Carrick Fry, the storekeeper, always kept which two of them, Orma Fry and the eldest Targatt girl,the number of rival candidates, and from the acerbity witha chair for him, and where he was sure to find one or two treated her for nearly a year afterward. And he had engagedVerena Marsh to come up from Creston and do theselectmen leaning on the long counter, in an atmosphereof rope, leather, tar and coffee-beans. Mr. Royall, though cooking. Verena was a poor old widow, doddering andmonosyllabic at home, was not averse, in certain moods, shiftless: Charity suspected that she came for her keep.18