e town'd come out to it hot-foot.
We're owin' Zittelhof on Eph Cadoza's coffin yet, an' I shouldn't wonder
an' that one evening would pay him all off _and_, same time, get you
rill well acquainted. Don't you think it's a nice _i_-dea?"

As I had come to Friendship chiefly to get away from everywhere, I
thought that I had never heard such a bad plan. But inasmuch as I was
obliged to refuse outright one invitation of my visitor's, about the
other I weakly temporized and promised to let her know. And she went
away, deploring my hasty acceptance of Mrs. Ricker and Kitton, although,
"How could you tell?" she strove to excuse me. "A person coming to a
strange town so, _of course_ they accept all their invitations good
faith. And then her signing her name that way might mislead you. It
gives a rill sensation of a hyphen. But still, the spelling--after all
you'd ought--"

She looked at me with tardy suspicion.

"Some geniuses can't spell very well, you know," I defended my
discrimination.

"That's so," she admitted brightly; "I see you're literary."

The next morning the other principal, Mrs. Ricker and Kitton, arrived to
keep her engagement with me. She was a little woman, suggesting wire,
which gave and sprang when she moved, and paper, which crackled when she
laughed. Her speech was all independence, confidence, self-possession;
but in her silences I have seldom seen so wistful a face as hers.

In response to my question:--

"Oh," Mrs. Ricker and Kitton said brightly, "everything's goin' fine. I
s'pose the town's still decidin' between us, but up to now I ain't had
but one regrets that can't come--that's Mis' Stew. She wrote it was on
account o' domestic affliction, an' I hadn't heard what, so I went right
down. 'Seems nobody had died--she ain't much of any family, anyway. But
she'd wrote her letter out of a letter book, an' the only one she could
find regrettin' an invite give domestic affliction for the reason. She
said she didn't know a letter like that hed to be true, an' I don't know
as it does, either."

She stood silent for a moment, searching my face.

"Look-a-here," she said; "they's somethin' I thought of. Mebbe you've
heard of it bein' done in the City somewheres. Do you s'pose folks'd be
willin' to send Emerel's an' my funeral flowers to the comin' out party
_instead_?"

"Funeral...?" I doubted.

"Grave flowers," she explained. "You know, they're a perfect waste so
far's the General Dead is concerne