And I would say, “A house that covers over most forty acres is a pretty big house.”

But she seemed to think that Mr. Plank would have built housen that covered a few more acres, and towered up higher, and had loftier cupalos.

And finally I got tired of tryin’ to quell her down, and I got so that I could let her talk and keep up a-thinkin’ on other subjects all the time.  Why, I got so I could have writ poetry, if that had been my aim, right under a constant loadin’ and onloadin’ of that Plank.

Curious, hain’t it?

As I said, there wuz only a few boarders, most of ’em quiet folks, who had been there some time.  Some on ’em had been there long enough to have children born under the ruff, who had growed up almost as big as their pa’s and ma’s.  There wuz several of ’em half children there, and among ’em wuz one of the same age who wuz old—­older than I shall ever be, I hope and pray.

He wuz gloomy and morbid, and looked on life, and us, with kinder mad and distrustful eyes.  Above all others, he wuz mean to his twin sister; he looked down on her and browbeat her the worst kind, and felt older than she did, and acted as if she wuz a mere child compared to him, though he wuzn’t more’n five minutes older than she wuz, if he wuz that.

Their names wuz Algernon and Guenivere Piddock, but they called ’em Nony and Neny—­which wuz, indeed, a comfort to bystanders.  Folks ort to be careful what names they put onto their children; yes, indeed.

Neny wuz a very beautiful, good-appearin’ young girl, and acted as if she would have had good sense, and considerable of it, if she hadn’t been afraid to say her soul wuz her own.

But Nony wuz cold and haughty.  He sot right by me on the north side, Josiah Allen sot on my south.  And I fairly felt chilly on that side sometimes, almost goose pimples, that young man child felt so cold and bitter towards the world and us, and so sort o’ patronizin’.

[Illustration:  He sot by me.]

He didn’t believe in religion, nor nothin’.  He didn’t believe in Christopher Columbus—­right there to the doin’s held for him, he didn’t believe in him.

“Why,” sez I, “he discovered the land we live in.”

He said, “He was very doubtful whether that wuz so or not—­histories made so many mistakes, he presoomed there never was such a man at all.”

“Why,” sez I, “he walked the streets of Genoa.”

And he sez, “I never see him there.”

And, of course, I couldn’t dispute that.

And he added, “That anyway there wuz too much a-bein’ done for him.  He wuz made too much of.”

He didn’t believe in wimmen, made a specialty of that, from Neny back to Rachael and Ruth.  He powed at wimmen’s work, at their efforts, their learnin’, their advancement.

Neny, good little bashful thing, wuz a member of the WCTU and the Christian Endeavor, and wanted to do jest right by them noble societies and the world.  But, oh, how light he would speak of them noble bands of workers in the World’s warfare with wrong!  To how small a space he wanted to reduce ’em down!