And all at once I says to myself, What did I care so I got some fun out of it. Other girls was always doing this. Lena Curtsy would have talked with him in a minute. Maybe I could get him to ask me to go to a show. I couldn't go, but I thought I'd like to make him ask me.
"Was you lonesome?" I ask', looking at him.
He didn't say anything. He just looked at me, smiling a little. I thought I'd better say a little more. I wanted him to know I wasn't a stick, but that I was in for fun, like a city girl.
"You don't look like a chap that'd be lonesome very long," I says. "Not if you can get acquainted this easy."
He kept looking at me, and smiling a little.
"Tell me," he says, "do you live about here?"
"Me? Right here. I'm the original Maud Muller," I says.
"And what do you do besides rake hay?" he says.
I couldn't think what else Maud Muller done. I hadn't read it since Fifth Reader. So I says:
"Well, she don't often get a chance to talk with traveling gentlemen."