"Well, she is," Mrs. Richardson returned shortly.
There was a silence, while Phebe inspected the black cambric binding of her fan, and tried to gather energy to go out into the hot sun once more. Mrs. Richardson had rocked herself into more placid humor.
"They've got a boarder over to Sykes's," she resumed.
"Have they?" Phebe spoke indifferently. Bannock Bars was too near town for her to realize how countrified it was, how the coming of a single stranger could stir the placid current of its existence.
"He's from New York, Bartlett is his name, or some such thing. They say he's a music feller."
"A what?" Phebe wondered whether Mrs. Richardson had reference to a member of a German band. The words suggested something of the kind.
"A feller that writes music. I don't know anything about it only what they say. Anyhow, he's brought a pianner with him, and they say he bangs away on it like all possessed, and then stops short and scolds. I went past there, one day, when the windows was open, and I heard him thumpin' and tiddlin' away for dear life. It didn't seem to me there was much tune to it, nor time neither; you couldn't so much as tell where one line left off and the next begun."
Phebe's fan slid out of her lap, and, as she stooped to pick it up, she dropped her handkerchief.
"Have you seen him?" she asked, when she was upright once more.
"How?"