By now I must have been smiling like a Cheshire cat.
Nate, or Nathaniel, one-time carpenter and builder (and still such, for all I know), strolled in. It was late in the afternoon, and he was lounging about in a white cotton shirt and grey trousers, his suspenders down about his hips, a pipe in his mouth and an evening paper in his hand.
“Well, Dorse,” he called, “where do you come from?”
I told him.
“Think of that, now,” exclaimed Mrs. McConnell, “and a car! And you came all the way through from New York? Well, lots of them do that now. Charlie Biggers went through from here to Pennsylvania in a Ford not long ago.”
She cackled stridently. I was fascinated by her vigor in age.
“Nate here,” she went on, “says he thinks we ought to get a machine one of these days, but lawsie! I don’t know whether I could learn to run it, and I’m certain he couldn’t.” Her keen birdlike eyes devoured me, and she smiled. “And so you’re a writer? Well, what do you write? Novels?”
“Well, some people condescend to call them that,” I answered. “I’d hesitate to tell you what some others call them.”
“It’s funny I never heard of any of ’em. What’s the names of some of ’em?”
I enlightened her.