"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.
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