And finally I got tired of tryin' to quell her down, and I got so that I could let her talk and keep up a-thinkin' on other subjects all the time. Why, I got so I could have writ poetry, if that had been my aim, right under a constant loadin' and onloadin' of that Plank.
As I said, there wuz only a few boarders, most of 'em quiet folks, who had been there some time. Some on 'em had been there long enough to have children born under the ruff, who had growed up almost as big as their pa's and ma's. There wuz several of 'em half children there, and among 'em wuz one of the same age who wuz old—older than I shall ever be, I hope and pray.
He wuz gloomy and morbid, and looked on life, and us, with kinder mad and distrustful eyes. Above all others, he wuz mean to his twin sister; he looked down on her and browbeat her the worst kind, and felt older than she did, and acted as if she wuz a mere child compared to him, though he wuzn't more'n five minutes older than she wuz, if he wuz that.
Their names wuz Algernon and Guenivere Piddock, but they called 'em Nony and Neny—which wuz, indeed, a comfort to bystanders. Folks ort to be careful what names they put onto their children; yes, indeed.
Neny wuz a very beautiful, good-appearin' young girl, and acted as if she would have had good sense, and considerable of it, if she hadn't been afraid to say her soul wuz her own.
But Nony wuz cold and haughty. He sot right by me on the north side, Josiah Allen sot on my south. And I fairly felt chilly on that side sometimes, almost goose pimples, that young man child felt so cold and bitter towards the world and us, and so sort o' patronizin'.
He sot by me.
He didn't believe in religion, nor nothin'. He didn't believe in Christopher Columbus—right there to the doin's held for him, he didn't believe in him.