"Sum died a Tuesday, an', bein' it never rains but it pours, an' piles peelin's on ashes, or whatever it is they say, it was the Tuesday that the poorhouse burnt down—just like it knew the fire chief was gone. The poorhouse use' to be across the track, beyond the cemetery an' quite near my house. An' the night it burnt I was settin' on the side stoop without anything over my head, just smellin' in the air, when I see a little pinky look on the sky beyond the track. It wasn't moon-time, an' they wa'n't nothin' to bonfire that time o' year, an' I set still, pretendin' it was rose-bushes makin' a ladder an' buildin' a way of escape by night. It was such a nice evenin' you couldn't imagine anything rilly happenin' bad. But all at once I heard the fire-engine bell poundin' away like all possessed—an' then runnin' feet, like when they's an accident. I got to the gate just as somebody come rushin' past, an' I piped up what was the matter. 'Poorhouse's afire,' s'e. 'Poorhouse,' s'I. 'My land!' An' I out the gate an' run alongside of him, an' he sort o' slowed down for me, courteous.
"Then I noticed it was Eb Goodnight—lonelier'n ever now that his employer hed died that day. I'd never see Eb hustle that much before, an' the thought went through my head, kind o' wonderin', that he was runnin' as if the fire was a real relation o' his an' he was sent for. 'Know anything else about it?' I ask' him, keepin' up. 'Not much,' s'e, 'but I guess it's got such a head-start the whol' thing'll go like a shell.' An' when we got to the top o' the bank on the other side o' the track, we see it was that way—the poorhouse'd got such a head-start burnin' that nothin' could save it, though Timothy Toplady, that was town marshal an' chairman o' the county board, an' Silas Sykes an' Eppleby Holcomb, that was managers o' the poorhouse, an' some more, went puffin' past us, yellin', 'Put it out—run fer water—why don't you do suthin'?'—an' like that, most beside theirselves.
"'Them poor critturs,' says I, 'oh, my, them poor critturs in the home'—for there must 'a' ben twenty o' the county charges all quartered in the buildin'. An' when we come to the foot o' the poorhouse hill, land, land, I never see such Bedlam.
"The fire had started so soon after dusk that the inmates was all up yet. An' they was half of 'em huddled in a bunch by the side-yard stile an' half of 'em runnin' 'round wild as anything. The whol' place looked like when you hev a bad dream. It made me weak in my knees, an' I was winded anyway with runnin', an' I stopped an' leant up against a tree, an' Eb, he stopped too, takin' bearin's. An' there I was, plump against Elspie, standin' holdin' her arms 'round the tree trunk an' shiverin' some.
"'Elspie,' s'I, 'why, you poor child.'
"'No need to rub that in,' s'she, tart. It's the one word the county charges gets sensitive about—an' Eb, he seemed to sense that, an' he ask' her, hasty, how the fire started. He called her 'Miss,' too, an' I judged that 'Miss' was one o' them poultice words to her.
"'I donno,' s'she, 'but don't it look cheerful? The yard's all lit up nice, like fer comp'ny,' she says, rill pleased.
"It sort o' uncovered my nerves to hear her so unconcerned. I never hed understood her—none of us hed. She was from outside the state, but her uncle, Job Ore, was on our county board an' he got her into our poorhouse—like you can when you're in politics. Then he up an' died an' went home to be buried, an' there she was on our hands. She wa'n't rill crazy—we understood't she hadn't ben crazy at all up to the time her mother died. Then she hadn't no one to go to an' she got queer, an' the poorhouse uncle stepped in; an' when he died, he died in debt, so his death wa'n't no use to her. She was thirty odd, but awful little an' slim an' scairt-lookin', an' quite pretty, I allus thought; an' I never see a thing wrong with her till she was so unconcerned about the fire.
"'Elspie,' s'I, stern, 'ain't you no feelin',' s'I, 'for the loss o' the only home you've got to your back?'
"'Oh, I donno,' s'she, an' I could see her smilin' in that bright light, 'oh, I donno. It'll be some place to come to, afterwards. When I go out walkin',' s'she, 'I ain't no place to head for. I sort o' circle 'round an' come back. I ain't even a grave to visit,' s'she, 'an' it'll be kind o' cosey to come up here on the hill an' set down by the ashes—like they belonged.'