Explore "Red and Black" by Grece S. Richmond on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
"I think maybe -- it's come, Mr. Black."
Mrs. Hodder, housekeeper to the manse, stood trembling in the study doorway, a telegram in her hand. Yes, Mrs. Hodder was trembling. Robert Black would never know how like a mother she felt toward him. A lonely, more than middle-aged woman can't bake and brew and sew on buttons and generally look after a bachelor of any sort without coming to have a strong interest in him -- normally a maternal one. And when the bachelor is one who treats her with the consideration and friendliness this man had always shown Henrietta Hodder, small wonder if she comes to have a proprietary interest in him little short of that belonging to actual kinship.