Then, were there a vacant seat, I might
noiselessly unclose the door, glide in, and take my place among them,
without a word. My entrance might be so quiet, my aspect so familiar,
that they would forget how long I had been away, and suffer me to
melt into the scene, as a wreath of vapor melts into a larger cloud.
I dreaded a boisterous greeting. Beholding me at table, Zenobia, as
a matter of course, would send me a cup of tea, and Hollingsworth
fill my plate from the great dish of pandowdy, and Priscilla, in her
quiet way, would hand the cream, and others help me to the bread and
butter. Being one of them again, the knowledge of what had happened
would come to me without a shock. For still, at every turn of my
shifting fantasies, the thought stared me in the face that some evil
thing had befallen us, or was ready to befall.
Yielding to this ominous impression, I now turned aside into the
woods, resolving to spy out the posture of the Community as craftily
as the wild Indian before he makes his onset. I would go wandering
about the outskirts of the farm, and, perhaps, catching sight of a
solitary acquaintance, would approach him amid the brown shadows of
the trees (a kind of medium fit for spirits departed and revisitant,
like myself), and entreat him to tell me how all things were.
The first living creature that I met was a partridge, which sprung up
beneath my feet, and whirred away; the next was a squirrel, who
chattered angrily at me from an overhanging bough.
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