e, courteous.

"Then I noticed it was Eb Goodnight--lonelier'n ever now that his
employer hed died that day. I'd never see Eb hustle that much before,
an' the thought went through my head, kind o' wonderin', that he was
runnin' as if the fire was a real relation o' his an' he was sent for.
'Know anything else about it?' I ask' him, keepin' up. 'Not much,' s'e,
'but I guess it's got such a head-start the whol' thing'll go like a
shell.' An' when we got to the top o' the bank on the other side o' the
track, we see it was that way--the poorhouse'd got such a head-start
burnin' that nothin' could save it, though Timothy Toplady, that was
town marshal an' chairman o' the county board, an' Silas Sykes an'
Eppleby Holcomb, that was managers o' the poorhouse, an' some more, went
puffin' past us, yellin', 'Put it out--run fer water--why don't you do
suthin'?'--an' like that, most beside theirselves.

"'Them poor critturs,' says I, 'oh, my, them poor critturs in the
home'--for there must 'a' ben twenty o' the county charges all quartered
in the buildin'. An' when we come to the foot o' the poorhouse hill,
land, land, I never see such Bedlam.

"The fire had started so soon after dusk that the inmates was all up
yet. An' they was half of 'em huddled in a bunch by the side-yard stile
an' half of 'em runnin' 'round wild as anything. The whol' place looked
like when you hev a bad dream. It made me weak in my knees, an' I was
winded anyway with runnin', an' I stopped an' leant up against a tree,
an' Eb, he stopped too, takin' bearin's. An' there I was, plump against
Elspie, standin' holdin' her arms 'round the tree trunk an' shiverin'
some.

"'Elspie,' s'I, 'why, you poor child.'

"'No need to rub _that_ in,' s'she, tart. It's the one word the county
charges gets sensitive about--an' Eb, he seemed to sense that, an' he
ask' her, hasty, how the fire started. He called her 'Miss,' too, an' I
judged that 'Miss' was one o' them poultice words to her.

"'I donno,' s'she, 'but don't it look _cheerful_? The yard's all lit up
nice, like fer comp'ny,' she says, rill pleased.

"It sort o' uncovered my nerves to hear her so unconcerned. I never hed
understood her--none of us hed. She was from outside the state, but her
uncle, Job Ore, was on our county board an' he got her into our
poorhouse--like you can when you're in politics. Then he up an' died an'
went home to be buried, an' there she was on our hands. She wa'n't rill
crazy--we unde