“Madam,” he asked, hearing, as he thought, a chorus of snores winding down the gangway, “does anybody else sleep up there?”
“No, they hain’t nobody hardly now, sence the mill ’uz shot down.” Rather an evasive answer.
“How many?” he inquired.
“The mill is shot down, an’ most uv the hands has quit work, an’ they hain’t many stays hyer now.”
The guest, growing insistent, asked the third time, as he took a single, hesitating step upward, “Well, who are they—can’t you say just how many?”
Madame Calico, now on the defensive, grew more amiable—rather, less hostile—, but again took refuge in “the mill” and its shutting down: “Sence the mill wuz shot down, the’ve mos’ly all went away; they’s hardly any ub ’em left now.”
The guest was growing impatient, as she could readily see. Not liking the outlook, he stopped, turned as if to descend, and once more demanded, “Well, Madam, will you tell me just how many or not?”
She was loath to lose her guest and his pay, “after a-bein’ drug out’n” her bed. So she at last came to the point, but in her own roundabout way: “Sence the mill ’uz shot down they hain’t nobody sca’cely sleeps up hyer—nobody but Sam Thompson, an’ Tim Turney, an’ Joe Alley, an’ Bob Redford, an’ Jack Johnson, an’ Bill Ed Jeckley—I b’lieve them’s all—oh, yes, an’ Less Wilson. You kin sleep with Bill Ed, but he won’t sleep nowhar exceptin’ the fore side uv the bed.”
“Well,” the traveler muttered to himself, “in an adventure, even a formidable certainty is better than a gloomy doubt.”
They had now reached the landing at the angle in the wall. Madame Calico handed the little lamp to the guest, and turned to go, saying, “You kin bunk up with Bill Ed.”