"Not in just that way," replied Hiram.
"Well, for the land's sake, where did you stop? When you didn't come along at the proper time after the train got in last evening I began calling folks on the line. I called everybody that had a 'phone, and none of 'em had seen you. It was so rough a night—"
Hiram saw at once that the terrible Miss Pringle was, after all, a kindly soul. It could not be for the mere possession of a "male creature," sight unseen, that she had taken all this trouble to locate him, a stranger in Pringleton.
"You were most kind, Miss Pringle," he said quickly. "I am sorry to have caused you any disturbance of mind."
"But where did you stay?" insisted the woman, eyeing Hiram with two very sharp brown eyes.
It was evident that very little of importance went on in Miss Delia Pringle's neighborhood that she did not see. She was kindly of disposition as well as shrewd, Mr. Yancey Battick's opinion to the contrary notwithstanding. Hiram was not at all afraid of her when he looked into her plump and rosy face.
"I tell you," he said, smiling covertly, for he suspected from what the stationmaster had said how the majority of the neighbors looked upon Yancey Battick, "a heavy shower caught me and I made for the nearest house."
"And whose was that, for the land's sake?" was the instant demand.
"Mr. Battick's," Hiram said demurely.
"Yancey Battick?" almost shrieked Miss Pringle. "Why, he's crazy!"