No, if there wuz any secrets of sadness underlyin’ the frank openness and pleasantness of them clear blue eyes, we hadn’t none of us no way of tellin’.

We hadn’t no ways of peerin’ down under the clear blue depths, any further than he wuz willin’ to let us.

All we knew wuz, that though he looked happy and looked good-natured, back of it all, a-peerin’ out sometimes when you didn’t look for it, wuz a sunthin’ that looked like the shadder cast from a hoverin’ lonesomeness, and sorrow, and regret.

But he wuz a good-lookin’ feller, there hain’t a doubt of that, and good actin’ and smart.

He wuz a bacheldor, and we could all see plain that Miss Plank held his price almost above rubies.

If there wuz any good bits among vittles that wuz always good, it wuz Miss Plank’s desire that he should have them bits; if there wuz drafts a-comin’ from any pint of the compass, it wuz Miss Plank’s desire to not have him blowed on.  If any soft zephyr’s breath wuz wafted to any one of us from a open winder on a hot evenin’ or sunny noon, he wuz the one she wanted wafted to, and breathed on.

If her smiles fell warm on any, or all on us, he wuz the one they fell warmest on.  But we all liked him the best that ever wuz.  Even Nony Piddock seemed to sort of onbend a little, and moisten up with the dew of charity his arid desert of idees a little mite, when he wuz around.

And occasionally, when the bacheldor, whose name wuz Mr. Freeman, when he would, half in fun and half in earnest, answer Nony’s weary and bitter remarks, once in a while even that aged youth would seem to be ashamed of himself, and his own idees.

There wuz another widder there—­Miss Boomer; or I shouldn’t call her a clear widder—­I guess she wuz a sort of a semi-detached one—­I guess she had parted with him.

Wall, she cast warm smiles on Mr. Freeman—­awful warm, almost meltin’.

Miss Plank didn’t like Miss Boomer.

Miss Piddock didn’t want to cast no looks onto nobody, nor make no impressions.  She wuz a mourner for Old Piddock, that anybody could see with one eye, or hear with one ear—­that is, if they could understand the secrets of sithes; they wuz deep ones as I ever hearn, and I have hearn deep ones in my time, if anybody ever did, and breathed ’em out myself—­the land knows I have!

Miss Plank loved Miss Piddock like a sister; she said that she felt drawed to her from the first, and the drawin’s had gone on ever sence—­growin’ more stronger all the time.

Wall, there wuz two elderly men, very respectable, with two wives, one apiece, lawful and right, and their children, and Miss Schack and her three children, and a Mr. Bolster, and that wuz all there wuz of us, includin’ and takin’ in my pardner and myself.

Mr. Freeman wuz very rich, so Miss Plank said, and had three or four splendid rooms, the best—­“sweet”—­in the house, she said.