Mr. Kingsley—he lives in Halifax—come down to fix it all up."
So Dr. Wilcove was dead. Paul was saddened at this news, for he had looked forward to paying off his long moral obligation to the guardian whom he had ignored. He had also looked forward to asking Dr. Wilcove numerous questions about Aunt Verona—questions that hadn't occurred to him as a boy. He stood ruminating, as Mrs. Barker held the door half open, with an air of distrust mingled with deference and curiosity
Paul couldn't leave without having entered the house. "I'm Paul Minas," he announced. "Don't you remember me, Mrs. Barker? Miss Windell used to send me to buy yeast from you."
She was startled, then gave a cry of recognition. "Glory be! Why, if you ain't the very dead spit of old Captain Andrew! Well I never! And me takin' you for a summer visitor from Boston."
She invited him in, and he sat for a while in the old kitchen, ruined for him by Mrs. Barker's fussy attempts to make it comfortable. She was the sort of body who saved newspapers and bits of string in case they might "come in handy," which they didn't. And she adorned every object with knitted woollen mats or bows of "baby-ribbon."
It was the first time he had set foot within the kitchen since Aunt Verona had left it, and he felt her loss more poignantly now than he had done in the beginning. Life in Hale's Turning without Aunt Verona to interpret it was like music played on a dumb clavier.
"Nobody could find out where you was," Mrs. Barker finally explained. "Some said you was dead. So they decided to store all the stuff in the parlour and dining-room. I make a fire in there every off and on and keep it dusted. The roof's bad, and the chimneys ain't up to much."
