name is Arabella--" Miss Cobb said, "but all it did was to make it
mottled like an Easter egg. Everybody is charmed. There were no dogs
allowed while the old doctor lived. Things were different."

"Yes, things were different," I assented, limping over to heat the
curler. "How--how does Mr. Carter get along?"

Miss Cobb put down her hand-mirror and sniffed.

"Well," she said, "goodness knows I'm no trouble maker, but somebody
ought to tell that young man a few things. He's forever looking at
the thermometer and opening windows. I declare, if I hadn't brought my
woolen tights along I'd have frozen to death at breakfast. Everybody's
complaining."

I put that away in my mind to speak about. It was only by nailing the
windows shut and putting strips of cotton batting around the cracks that
we'd ever been able to keep people there in the winter. I had my first
misgiving then. Heaven knows I didn't realize what it was going to be.

Well, by the evening of that day things were going fairly well. Tillie
brought out a basket every morning to me at the spring-house,
fairly bursting with curiosity, and Mr. Sam got some canned stuff in
Finleyville and took it after dark to the shelter-house. But after the
second day Mrs. Dicky got tired holding a frying-pan over the fire and I
had to carry out at least one hot meal a day.

They got their own breakfast in a chafing-dish, or rather he got it and
carried it to her. And she'd sit on the edge of her cot, with her feet
on the soap box--the floor was drafty--wrapped in a pink satin negligee