He went reluctantly back to the shore and rowed across the river in a brown study . I do n't know whether Winslow was afflicted with chronic thirst or not , or whether the East side water was n't so good as that of the West side ; but I do know that he fairly haunted the Pennington farmhouse after that . Mrs. Pennington was home the next time he went , and he asked her about her new girl . To his surprise the good lady was unusually reticent . She could n't really say very much about Nelly . No , she did n't belong anywhere near Riverside . In fact , she -- Mrs. Pennington -- did n't think she had any settled home at present . Her father was travelling over the country somewhere . Nelly was a good little girl , and very obliging . Beyond this Winslow could get no more information , so he went around and talked to Nelly , who was sitting on the bench under the poplars and seemed absorbed in watching the sunset . She dropped her g 's badly and made some grammatical errors that caused Winslow 's flesh to creep on his bones . But any man could have forgiven mistakes from such dimpled lips in such a sweet voice . He asked her to go for a row up the river in the twilight and she assented ; she handled an oar very well , he found out , and the exercise became her . Winslow tried to get her to talk about herself , but failed signally and had to content himself with Mrs. Pennington 's meagre information . He told her about himself frankly enough -- how he had had fever in the spring and had been ordered to spend the summer in the country and do nothing useful until his health was fully restored , and how lonesome it was in Riverside in general and at the Beckwith farm in particular . He made out quite a dismal case for himself and if Nelly was n't sorry for him , she should have been . * * * * * At the end of a fortnight Riverside folks began to talk about Winslow and the Penningtons ' hired girl . He was reported to be `` dead gone '' on her ; he took her out rowing every evening , drove her to preaching up the Bend on Sunday nights , and haunted the Pennington farmhouse . Wise folks shook their heads over it and wondered that Mrs. Pennington allowed it . Winslow was a gentleman , and that Nelly Ray , whom nobody knew anything about , not even where she came from , was only a common hired girl , and he had no business to be hanging about her .
She was pretty , XXXXX be sure ; but she was absurdly stuck-up and would n't associate with other Riverside `` help '' at all .
Beyond In about after as if over to under whether