He soon concluded she was sane enough, however, but the most voluble talker who ever shared his seat.
“I never seen the beat o’ her,” he said that night at Phinney’s store,–the village news agency,–“she clacked every minit from the time we started till we fetched in, an’ I never callated sich goin’s on ez she told about cud ever happen. Thar was murder ’n’ runnin’ away, ’n’ she got ketched ’n’ carried off ’n’ fetched back, ’n’ a whole lot o’ resky business. She believes in ghosts, too, sorter Injun sperits, ’n’ she kin swear jist ez easy ez I kin. It seems the Frisbies hev kinder ’dopted her, ’n’ I guess they’ll hev their hands full. She’s a bright ’un, though, but sich a talker!”
At Aunt Comfort’s spacious, old-fashioned home, where Chip was now installed, she soon began to create the same impression. This had been Angie’s former home, and her Aunt Comfort Day had been her foster-mother.
This family, in addition to the new arrival, consisted of Aunt Comfort, rotund and warm-hearted; Hannah Pettibone, a well-along spinster of angular form and temper, thin to an almost painful degree, with a well-defined mustache; and a general helper on the farm, and a chore boy about Chip’s age named Nezer, completed the list.
Once included in this somewhat diverse group, Chip became an immediate bone of contention.
Aunt Comfort, of course, opened her heart to her at once; but Hannah closed hers, almost from the first day, and in addition she began to nurse malice as well. There was some reason for this, mainly due to Chip’s startling freshness of speech.
“I thought ye must be a man wearin’ wimmin’s clothes, the first time I see ye,” she said to Hannah the next day after her arrival, and without meaning offence. “It was all on account o’ yer little whiskers, I guess. I never see a woman with ’em afore. Why don’t ye shave?”
This was enough; for if there was any one thing more mortifying than all else to Hannah, it was her facial blemish, and a mention of it she considered an intentional insult.
From this moment onward she hated Chip.
Nezer, however, took to her as a duck to water, and her story, which he soon heard, became a real dime novel to him, and not content with one telling, he insisted on repetition. This was also unfortunate for–blessed with a vivid imagination and sure to enlarge upon all facts–he soon spread the story with many blood-curdling additions.