in the house,
he's across the street to the Bangses', but you'll see him," she said,
encouragingly. "It'll be awful pleasant for you two orthers to get
acquainted. The Bangses don't keep cows, an' every night at milkin'
time, over he comes to get a glass o' warm milk; guess he likes to talk
to our men-folks. Old Bangs ain't much comp'ny for anybody, let alone a
writer. He's got a man with him to wait on him; a kind o' nurse, I
b'lieve. He was near dead before he came here, though he looks pretty
smart now--had a fever. Some of the folks here hev got it around he was
out of his head, a man so, a-settin' around out o' doors, writin' from
mornin' till night. Lord, how mad it made the Bangses!" Mrs. Hopper
indulged in an abrupt retrospective laugh of enjoyment. "They was so set
up, havin' a writer there, an' Mary Bangs was pretty well taken down
when I told her we was a-goin' to have one here. She acted as if she
didn't b'lieve there was more'n one orther to New York, an' that was Mr.
Longworth," continued Mrs. Hopper, regarding me with a proprietor's
pride, as I removed my hat and hung it on a nail driven in the wall. I
smiled as I reflected that I, too, should doubtless be looked on with
suspicion as a fit subject for a straight-jacket, if I, an able-bodied
young woman, should sit "out o' doors" with my writing, while my
presumable betters were working.

"Well, I guess I'll go down now," said Mrs. Hopper, after a brief pause,
in which she examined my gown. "I expect you want y'r dinner. We live a
good piece from the store, Miss Marriott an' any time if you should get
out of ink, don't make any bones of asking for it. We've got some right
here in the house, an' you're as welcome to it as if you was my own
daughter."

I was glad to find, at dinner, that the family consisted of Mr. and Mrs.
Hopper only, with the exception of a couple of farm-hands, whose
lumbering tread down the back-stairs wakened me each morning about four.
I found Mr. Hopper a tall, bent old man, with meek, faded blue eyes, and
a snowy frill of beard. He had an especially sweet and pathetic voice,
with a little quaver in it, like a bashful girl's.

He laid down his knife and fork, and looked at me with an air of gentle
inquiry, as I took my seat at the table. "Mrs. Hopper tells me you're a
literary," he said at length. I'm afraid I replied, "Yes?" with the
rising inflection of the village belle, nothing else occurring to me to
say.

"Well," said Mr.