"Good-morning, Miss Weir. We're here yet, you see. If these folks ain't a caution, and no mistake! Davy! Davy Munn! Are you listening for that there train?"
"Did ye look on the pantry shelf?" whispered Jake, cautiously, putting his head in at the door, and avoiding Mrs. Winters' eye. "Sometimes I leave it there."
"Just like you," grumbled the tidy schoolmistress, rummaging among the cans of spice and pickle bottles.
"Perhaps it's in the sewing-machine drawer," suggested Mrs. Munn, who had come panting down the stairs. "Hannah's jist ready, Jake," she added, hopefully.
"What'll you do if the new doctor comes on this train?" asked Miss Long, peeping at her pompadour in the little mirror above the sink.
"I dunno," answered the new doctor's housekeeper. "It's no use talkin' about it, anyhow. There's more harm done by talkin' over things than anything else in the world."
Miss Long shrugged her shoulders impatiently. That was Mrs. Munn's invariable answer. She had been old Dr. Williams' housekeeper for ten years, and had met all questions regarding his private affairs by the vague formula, "I dunno." A close woman was Mrs. Mum, as the village called her; a treasure of a woman, old Dr. Williams had said, when he recommended her to his young successor.
Ella Anne sighed. "That pipe must 'a' fell down the well," she remarked, with an accent of despair that was not all caused by the supposed catastrophe.
"Is he going to have them three downstairs rooms for his offices, or only two?" she ventured again.
Mrs. Munn stared vacantly. "I dunno," she said. "Mebby he is."