nd some folks hasn't. But
what I say is, nobody can tell which is which. Because now and then the
soft-spine' kind just hardens up all in a minute same as steel. So when
I meet a stranger that sort o' sops along through life, limp and floppy,
I never judge him. I just say, 'You look some like a loose shutter, but
mebbe you can fair bang the house down, if you rilly get to blowin'.' It
was that way with Eb Goodnight.

"I donno how it is other places. But I've noticed with us here in
Friendship--an' I've grown to the town from short dresses to
bein'-careful-what-I-eat--I've often noticed't when folks seems not to
have any backbone to speak of, or even when they go 'round sort o'
crazy--they's usually some other reason, like enough. Sensitive or sick
or lonesome, or like that. It was so with Eb--an' it was so with Elspie.
Elspie, though, was interestin' on account o' bein' not only a little
crazy, but rill pretty besides. But Eb, he was the kind that a
sign-board is more interestin' than. An' yet--"

With that she paused, looking down some way of her own thought. I knew
Calliope's "an' yet." It splendidly conceded the entire converse of her
argument.

"Eb come here to Friendship," she went on, "less public than Elspie did.
Elspie come official, as an inmate o' the county house. Eb, he sort o'
crep' in town, like he crep' everywhere else. He introduced himself to
me through sellin' needles. He walked in on me an' a two-weeks ironin'
one mornin' with, 'Lemme present myself as Ebenezer Goodnight, sewin'
needles, knittin' needles, crochet hooks an' shuttles an' anything o'
that,' an' down he set an' never opened his mouth about his needles
again. Eb was real delicate, for an agent. He just talked all the time
about Friendship an' himself. 'The whol' blame' town's kin,' s'e; 'I
never see such a place. _Every_body's kin, only just me. Air you,' he
ask' me wistful, 'cousin' of 'em all, too?'

"'Mis' Sprague that's dead was connected up with me by marriage an' Mis'
Sykes is my mother's secunt cousin,' I owned up.'

"'That's it again,' s'e, sighin'. 'I'm the odd number, dum it,' he says
sorrowful.

"Well, an' he hed sort of an odd-number way about him, too. He went
along the street like he didn't belong. I donno if you know what I mean,
but he was always takin' in the tops o' buildin's an' lookin' at the
roads an' behavin' like he noticed--the way you don't when you live in a
town. Yes, Ebenezer Goodnight went around like he