“That’s the name,” I says; “I most forgot it. Well, Miss Mary Jane she told me to tell you she’s gone over there in a dreadful hurry—one of them’s sick.”
“Which one?”
“I don’t know; leastways, I kinder forget; but I thinks it’s—”
“Sakes alive, I hope it ain’t Hanner?”
“I’m sorry to say it,” I says, “but Hanner’s the very one.”
“My goodness, and she so well only last week! Is she took bad?”
“It ain’t no name for it. They set up with her all night, Miss Mary Jane said, and they don’t think she’ll last many hours.”
“Only think of that, now! What’s the matter with her?”
I couldn’t think of anything reasonable, right off that way, so I says:
“Mumps.”