"What do you think of those two young people at Nellie's, anyway?" Mrs. Wiley dropped her voice confidentially. "I was meaning to ask you that, right at first."
"Well, if you ask me," said Mrs. Ray, "I can't make him out, and I think she's mooney. I'm a great judge of mooney people ever since I first knew Mr. Ray, and that girl looks very mooney to me. Look at her coming here and hiking right over and buying the Whittacker house next day—a house I wouldn't send a rat to buy—not if I had a real liking for the rat. And now the way she's pulling it to pieces and nailing on new improvements, with the trees all boxed up, as though trees weren't free as air—oh, she's mooney, very mooney—yes, indeed."
"Nellie don't think they act loving," said Mrs. Wiley; "and Joey Beall says they don't act loving even when they're alone together. He's been building a culvert for Mr. Ledge, and he's seen 'em alone together twice. Joey knows how people ought to act when they're alone together. He always knows when folks are in love, before they know themselves. He tells by seeing them alone together. Why, he knew when you was going to be married—he saw you and Mr. Ray alone together that day you walked to the Lower Falls."
"But it wasn't through our acting loving that he knew it," said Mrs. Ray, energetically ruminative between the dipper of water and the clothes to be sprinkled; "my, but I was mad that day! It was the first and last time anybody ever fooled me into walking to the Lower Falls. Yes, indeed. I like to of died! If Mr. Ray hadn't asked me to marry him, I'd never have forgiven him getting me to go on that walk. Those flights of steps! And those paths! All the way down I was wanting to turn round and go back. I made up my mind never to take Mr. Ray's word for nothing again. And I never did. He fooled me into that walk, but he never fooled me again. Yes, indeed. Never!"
"But Joey Beall saw you that day," said Mrs. Wiley, whose mind was of that strength which is not to be swept beyond its gait by any other mind's rapidity, "and he said right off that night you'd marry him."
"Maybe he saw Mr. Ray take his first and second wife down to the Lower Falls, and knew it from his looks with them—Mr. Ray took 'em both down there, and asked 'em each to marry him coming back. All the way down he was telling me what they each said to everything they saw. And coming back he showed me where he asked 'em each. Mr. Ray never made any secret of his first and second wife to me. I'll say that for him. Yes, indeed. And like enough Joey was around then. He's always round when people are alone together."
"But he doesn't think these young people act loving," Mrs. Wiley went on, recurring to the main issue under discussion. "Joey says they don't have the right way at all. He says they don't disagree right, either. They're on opposite sides of the dam, the same as if they were married folks, but they don't seem to feel interested in their discussing. Nellie says they're real pleasant, but she can't understand them; Nellie's very far from making them out."
"Oh, Nellie can't make nothing out. She and Jack is dead easy. Look at those other boarders they've got. She says she can't make them out, either. I should think not."
Mrs. Wiley's standpoint refused to stretch to the other boarders. She sighed again.
"She seems a very nice girl," she said, sadly.