love to talk about that man; truly she used his
sirname to connect us to the vast past, and to the mysterious future. We
trod that Plank every day and all day, if we would listen to her.

And sometimes when I would try to get her offen that Plank for a minute,
and would bring up the World's Fair to her, and how big the housen wuz,
I would find my efforts futile; for all she would say about 'em wuz to
tell what Mr. Plank would have done if he had been a-livin', and if he
had been onhampered, and out of salt, how much better he would have done
than the directors did, and what bigger housen he would have built.

And I would say, "A house that covers over most forty acres is a pretty
big house."

But she seemed to think that Mr. Plank would have built housen that
covered a few more acres, and towered up higher, and had loftier
cupalos.

And finally I got tired of tryin' to quell her down, and I got so that I
could let her talk and keep up a-thinkin' on other subjects all the
time. Why, I got so I could have writ poetry, if that had been my aim,
right under a constant loadin' and onloadin' of that Plank.

Curious, hain't it?

As I said, there wuz only a few boarders, most of 'em quiet folks, who
had been there some time. Some on 'em had been there long enough to have
children born under the ruff, who had growed up almost as big as their
pa's and ma's. There wuz several of 'em half children there, and among
'em wuz one of the same age who wuz old--older than I shall ever be, I
hope and pray.

He wuz gloomy and morbid, and looked on life, and us, with kinder mad
and distrustful eyes. Above all others, he wuz mean to his twin sister;
he looked down on her and browbeat her the worst kind, and felt older
than she did, and acted as if she wuz a mere child compared to him,
though he wuzn't more'n five minutes older than she wuz, if he wuz that.

Their names wuz Algernon and Guenivere Piddock, but they called 'em Nony
and Neny--which wuz, indeed, a comfort to bystanders. Folks ort to be
careful what names they put onto their children; yes, indeed.

Neny wuz a very beautiful, good-appearin' young girl, and acted as if
she would have had good sense, and considerable of it, if she hadn't
been afraid to say her soul wuz her own.

But Nony wuz cold and haughty. He sot right by me on the north side,
Josiah Allen sot on my south. And I fairly felt chilly on that side
sometimes, almost goose pimples, that young man child felt so