After she had the robes tucked around her she took another look at the woman who sat beside her on the back seat. She had met Mrs. Peters the year before at the county fair, and the thing she remembered about her was that she didnt seem like a sheriffs wife. She was small and thin and didnt have a strong voice. Mrs. Gorman, sheriffs wife before Gorman went out and Peters came in6, had a voice that somehow seemed to be backing up the law with every word. But if Mrs. Peters didnt look like a sheriffs wife, Peters made it up in looking like a sheriff. He was to a dot the kind of man who could get himself elected sheriff7- a heavy man with a big voice, who was particularly genial with the lawabiding, as if to make it plain that he knew the difference between criminals and non-criminals. And right there it came into Mrs. Hales mind, with a stab8, that this man who was so pleasant and lively with all of them was going to the Wrights now as a sheriff,
"The countrys not very pleasant this time of year," Mrs. Peters at last ventured, as if she felt they ought to be talking as well as the men.
Mrs. Hale scarcely finished her reply, for they had gone up a little hill and could see the Wright place now, and seeing it did not make her feel like talking. It looked very lonesome this cold March morning. It had always been a lonesome-looking place. It was down in a hollow, and the poplar trees around it were lonesome-looking trees. The men were looking at it and talking about what had happened. The county attorney9 was bending to one side of the buggy, and kept looking steadily at the place as they drew up to it.
"Im glad you came with me," Mrs. Peters said nervously, as the two women were about to follow the men in through the kitchen door.
Even after she had her foot on the door-step, her hand on the knob, Mar tha Hale had a moment of feeling she could not cross that threshold. And the reason it seemed she couldnt cross it now was simply because she hadnt crossed it before. Time and time again it had been in her mind, "I ought to go over and see Minnie Foster" - she still thought of her as Minnie Foster, though for twenty years she had been Mrs. Wright. And then there was always something to do and Minnie Foster would go from her mind. But now she could come.
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