"Isn't this the Mrs. Hemphill I remember?"
The latter turned quickly.
"Hey? Oh, why yes, I do mind you now. Let's see, you come to sell a washin' machine, didn't you? Or was it a story-paper? Oh! no, now I know," darting suspicious glances over the head of the child in her arms, "you was talkin' about schools and tryin' to get one up."
"Well, partly," answered Joyce, rather crestfallen, and glanced up to meet the dancing eyes of Larry, who was passing by and caught the high-keyed sentence. "But you know I have come here to live now, and I assure you I am not a teacher—just a private citizen."
"Do tell! Well, I thought you was something or other—they's sech a raft of agents along; though my Mary tells me 'tain't a circumstance to the city—Mate works out in the city. Let me make you acquainted with Mis' Flaherty. She's the lady what lives in Bachelor's Row and takes in boarders and washin's—now, Johnny, you stop a-tuggin' at my skirts, will ye? You've started the gethers a'ready.—She ain't exactly a bachelor herself, but she's next to it—a widder woman. He! he!"
Mrs. Hemphill's laughter was so much like the "crackling of thorns under a pot" as to be far from pleasant. Joyce hastened to speak.
"But I can't see why you preferred not to move, Mrs. Flaherty. Don't you like the new houses?" she asked, a bit anxiously, looking from one to the other and feeling decidedly wet-blanketed.
"Oh, they'll do," nodding the cap frills vigorously. "It ain't fur the loikes o' me to be sayin' anythin' agin 'em, but I never did take to these new-fangled doin's, 'm. I've heered tell how them water pipes'll be afther busting up with the first frost, just like an old gun, and I don't want any sich doin's on my premises. No sir! I ain't so old but I can pump water out of a well yet, and it's handy enough.' 'Tain't more'n just across the strate, and whin 'tain't dusty, nur snowy, nur muddy, it's all right enough."
"Well, I don't carry water when I can make it run by turning a stopple—not much I don't!" cried Mrs. Hemphill vigorously, meanwhile tilting back and forth on heels and toes with a jolting motion which was gradually producing drowsiness in the infant she held. "And my man says it can't freeze in them pipes 'cause the nateral gas is goin' to run day and night and keep 'em hot. And Nate Tierney, he says 't water an' heat an' lightin' is goin' to be jest as free, in our town, as sunshine an' air is everywhere. That's what Nate says, and if it's true it's a mighty big load off 'n us poor folks, and that's certain!"
"But we're goin' to be taxed for 'em," put in another woman, joining the group—a lanky creature with washed-out eyes, and lips that she seemed in danger of swallowing, so sunken were they.