At Bent's Hotel

IT was just before the dawn of a day in June that I made the acquaintance of Mrs. Nancy Bent. The moon was shining in the pale sky, glorifying the distorted pine-tree in front of BENT’S Hotel,— so ran the legend above the door, — and rendering darkness visible in the swamp beyond the road, where the sullen waters of an intensely muddy creek murmured hoarsely. Dew lay heavy upon the ground, and miasma hung heavy in the air; yet Mrs. Nancy Bent stood forth in déshabillé, reckless of exposure, as though she bore a charmed life. I afterwards learned that she possessed a specific against chills, which enabled her, so she affirmed, to defy the perils of that deadly marsh. Her faith in the unsavory brew she was wont to concoct at sunrise, and dispense, gratis, to all who would partake thereof, must have been strong indeed, since she did not scruple to come out at that hour of the summer morning in any better protection than was afforded by a white cotton sack and a skirt worn over a bouncing hoop of obsolete rotundity, a ragged green veil wrapped about her head, and a pair of unmanageable carpet slippers upon her stockingless feet. Mrs. Nancy Bent was the landlady of a little wayside hotel in the State of Mississippi, where the chances of travel compelled me to stop for a few hours’ shelter. The train that had brought me to this forlorn spot went thundering on its northward way, leaving me with a desolate feeling of having arrived at the limit of the world, — a feeling not a little intensified by the dismal hooting of owls and the melancholy croaking of the frogs in the neighboring swamp land ; nor was my sense of desolation at all cheered by the unwelcome tidings that the train which was to bear me away from this Ultima Thule had not yet run down from the little town whither I was faring, the terminus of the branch road, about twenty miles distant.

There was no help for it: from four A. M. until noon that summer day, I was at the mercy of the “ garrulously given ” mistress of Bent’s Hotel. There was a Mr. Bent, “ the peaceablest, onquarrelsomest man alive,” according to his wife’s verdict, — no doubt a just one, for lie was “of his porte as meke as is a mayde; ” but the ruling spirit, the presiding genius, of this traveler’s rest was Mrs. Nancy. Her husband apparently served no other purpose in the economy of the establishment to which by name he belonged than to conduct the hapless wayfarer to that cramped and cheerless shelter, framed of upright cracks, with scattering planks between ; plainly showing that but small consideration of wintry weather had entered into the architect’s plans.

Happily, however, it was near midsummer when I arrived at Bent’s. Mr. Bent, a giant with a beguiling smile, walked out of the small station house, as the train in which I came moved away, and meekly offered to conduct me and the one other traveler — a young woman carrying a baby in her arms — to the “ hotel,” which we saw dimly outlined, just across the road, the planks being destitute of paint or whitewash. It was that hour of the twenty-four when, according to physiologists, vitality is at its lowest ebb, and we two women followed the man up the little slope to his door in despondent silence, — a silence that did not long remain unbroken, however ; for Mrs. Bent, audible before she was visible, raised her voice in shrill expostulation from the dim interior of her dwelling-place : —

“ I say, Bent ! this here won’t do fur me. It’s too onchristian-like, — rousting a bone-tired woman outen bed sich a time as this, nuther night nor day. Bound ef I was a man, and one on the powers that be over this here road, I ’d not allow no trains stoppin’ at way-stations sich a onhallowed time, an’ people callin’ for rooms, an’ nary room to spare ’em. They ought to build a bigger hotel here. How do they ’spect me, with the house full o’ visitin’ kin, to s’ply beds at sich like onhandy notice? There’s my own bed I’m just this moment out of, and that’s ’bout’s much as anybody can count on from anybody else.”

By the time this tirade was delivered Mrs. Bent stood forth to view: a wiry, scantily-clothed little body, with disheveled hair, sallow face, and an odd serenity of countenance that contrasted ludicrously with the querulousness of her words and the penetrating harshness of her voice.

Porch there was none ; so Mrs. Bent, when she came out to meet us, stood shivering upon Ihe dew-drenched grass, while she paused deliberately to inspect the two victims and a half, counting the baby, which her husband had brought her.

The woman carrying the baby yawned, and said, with a sleepy amiability, that it made no difference to her whose bed she took; but I, more considerate or less amiable, turning to Mr. Bent, who stood by, wordless, with an imbecile smile upon his broad face, expressed my entire willingness to occupy one of those comfortless inventions of the enemy of rest, a split-bottomed chair.

“ Shoo ! Shoo ! ” quoth Mrs. Bent, ushering us indoors with a wildly swinging motion of both her hands, as if she were driving chickens to roost. “ It ’s small use to talk to Bent; he ’s as deef as a pine-tree with the wind a-roariu’ in its top. I don’t waste no time talking to him, I can tell you.”

As we crossed the threshold, a lame goat hobbled painfully out of a corner of the dim passage, and drew familiarly near. This bizarre pet Mrs. Bent addressed as “ Pups,” with her a term of endearment, as I discovered later, which she applied indiscriminately to goats, dogs, cats, cows, chickens, and children. “ Hey, Pups! ” she cried, kindly, but in a voice so loud as to suggest that the goat might be as deaf as Mr. Bent. “ So, so, now ; git back, you po’ crittur, — git back. It’s too early yit for yo’ corn-bread.”

This affectionate little speech, far from repelling the lame goat, instantly called forth an earless dog, a tailless cat, and a blind turkey with a broken wing, which motley crew, hurrying helter-skelter from their common den under the tumble-down staircase, crowded around their mistress, and nearly upset her.

“ Shoo, shoo, Pups ! ” cried Mrs. Bent, with shrill good-nature, kicking aimlessly right and left, and sending one of her big slippers flying out of sight into the dark hole whence these creatures came.

Whether this feat was accomplished intentionally or not, it had the effect of creating a diversion : goat, turkey, dog, and cat immediately made speed after the slipper, and Mr. Bent having departed for some nook unknown, we two women — I with my satchel, and the other with her baby — followed Mrs. Bent into the room sacred to her broken slumbers.

A poor place it was, with a rough floor, a narrow window, and a door on one side, opening upon a weedy garden. Opposite this were two other doors leading, on either side, to rooms beyond, and indicating plainly enough that Mrs. Bent’s chamber was too much of a thoroughfare to permit its inmates any great amount of privacy or repose. There were two beds in the room : one, a narrow couch, was occupied by a pair of sallow-faced, sandy-haired twins, eight or nine years of age; the other Mrs. Bent hospitably pointed out as “a snug enough place for a snooze before break o’ day.”

My fellow-traveler was not critical ; perhaps she was too tired and sleepy ; at any rate, she stayed for neither thanks nor apology, but lay down with her child, and speedily went to sleep.

“ You ain’t a-goin’ to tumble in, eh ?” said Mrs. Bent to me, incredulously.

“ Why, no, thank you,” I replied; “it is hardly worth while. I shall do very well sitting up.”

With a look like that of Abou Ben Adhem’s angel, “ made of all sweet accord,” Mrs. Bent said, “To be sho’. Then I ’ll take t’ other cheer myself, an’ sit here, handy-like to the winder, so’s I can talk; for ’t ain’t often I git a chance. Bent, he’s deef as a stone, an’ ef I did n’t talk to the pups around I might forgit how.”

Then Mrs. Bent, making a dive into a little cranny in the wall, drew thence a dwarfish black bottle, the contents of which were unmistakably betrayed by the slender stick protruding from its wide mouth ; which small magic wand was no sooner transferred to Mrs. Bent’s mouth than she opened upon me the volleys of her insatiate tongue. Not brandy, nor gin, but the pungent rappee was the source whence Mrs. Bent drew her inspiration.

“ I can allers tell the folks as don’t dip,” said Mrs. Bent, accompanying her words with a glance of compassion that gave them a personal application; “ they are a limp-like lookin’ kind, with no spring to their backbone, that sits down ’s if they had n’t no mind to move agin in a hurry. But as fur me, give me a bottle o’ good strong snuff, a sof’ redgum bresh, — not too lember, mind, — an’ a winder handy, an’ I don’t ask nobody no odds.

“ Some folks says it’s ruination to the liver, but that don’t scare me wuth a cent,” she continued, defiantly. " Let each one jedge for theirselves, I say; an’ I know when my bottle ’s out I ain’t wuth a dab; but gi’ me my reg’lar dips, an’ I kin run this hotel.

“ I ain’t one o’ the onres’less kind, myself. Set some folks down here, an’ they’d pine an’ pine, like a cotton-stalk with the rust; but I’m bound to make things spry wheresomedever I go ! Fust thing I done here was to hunt out a spring. Up to my time, I ’m plagued if they did n’t drink that muddy stuff outen that creek over yonder. Lord ! I don’t know any greater hendrance to the temp’rance cause than muddy water ; it allers takes seasoning to make it go down.

“ Folks said to Bent, when we ’greed to take charge here, — there’s allermost allers people to disadvise you, you know, — folks said to Bent, ‘ Yon can’t stan’ it; you can’t never stan’ it. Folks has tried it, an’ quit, disgustid. The water is bad, an’ the air is bad, an’ the lonesomeness is intollable.’ ‘ Well,’ I says to Bent, ‘ we kin try it.’ I allers had a kind o’ notion I could keep hotel. Some folks, I s’pose, might call it lonesome, but that ’s ’cordin’ to how you look at it. A train up an’ a train down, every day, or leastwise at night, on the main road, and the same on the branch road, not to say nothin’ o’ freights, is enough to keep a place lively, to my thinkin’; leastwise, I know it gives me stir in plenty. There’s passengers comin’ an’goin’, so’s I git the fashions handy,” eying my dress critically. “ To be sho’, there ain’t much Christmas nor Fo’th July; but I git a free peep at every circus an’ show as travels these two roads, bein’ as they’re obliged to put up here; an’ though Sunday-go-to-meetin’ is scarcer ’n hen’s teeth, there comes along a preacher, now and then, an’ holds prayers as would fair make your hair stand on eend with repentance. Moreover an’ besides,” continued Mrs. Bent, with eager pride, “ things kin happen here same’s in towns. Why, you b’lieve me, now, there’s Framer, as is engineer on the branch road, an’ Pining, the operator [of the telegraph] here, you know, has been in a row goin’ on weeks. I look out fur blazes reg’lar, every time Framer’s train comes in. Bent, he says to me, says he, ‘ You mind, Nan, or you ’ll git hurt, sho’, nosin’ round in men’s quarrels.’ Framer, he ’s got a pistol, you see,” Mrs. Bent kindly explained, “ an’ Bent, he’s the peaceablest, onquarrelsomest man alive. I don’t say so ’kase he’s my husband, — I say so ’kase he is ; you jest ask anybody. ‘That’ll do for you, Bent,’ says I ‘ You ’re so deef you can’t hear thunder; but as fur me, my ears is cocked fur all that’s goin’ on. You better b’lieve I ’ll look out for number one, and take care o’ this hotel into the bargain.’

“ Now I ain’t in this here Framer an’ Pining quarrel, un’stan’; but I do like to see a fair fight, ef fightin’ ’s obliged to be, an’ so I take my stan’ to see Pining don’t git put upon. Not as I upholds Pining; be ’s the meddlesomest man a-goin’, an’ that’s jest what gets him into his troubles, as I ain’t slow to tell him. Pining knows I ain’t got so much cause to uphold him, a meddlesome, undermining rat. ’T ain’t so long sence he sot up to interfere with Bent ; an’ef Bent had n’ta had me to back him, I don’t know but that wood corntract might a-busted. ’T was me put Bent up to that spec. He ’s too deef to keep hotel, Bent is, an’ I could n’t stan’ the looks of him hangin’ round, loose-like; so I told him to go for a railroad woodpile, when all of a suddin’ Pining took a fool notion to grab that wood corntract fur hisself ! ” (“ He would n’t a-half tended to it, — not he ! ” Mrs. Bent added, in a scornful parenthesis.) “ Howsomedever, Pining, he set his wire a-goin’ to telegraph a pack o’ stuff ’bout Bent, his deefness bein’ a drawback to the business, — as if a man needed ears to see how to stack up wood! Says I, ‘Bent, do you take a fool’s advice,’ — an’ Bent, he knows I lack a power uv bein’ a fool, — ‘an’ do you pop aslide the fust train down, be she passenger or be she freight, and interview the powers that be yo’self; an’ don’t you come back thouten that corntract.’ An’ Bent, he knowed better ’n to come back with his finger in his mouth, an’ me a watchin’ fur him.

“Pining was powerful upsot—an’ I don’t blame him nuther, for there’s money in that wood-pile — when he found out as Bent had beat him ; but he knowed Bent had me to back him, an’ he jest had to chaw on his wrath like a piece o’ whit-leather. But, law sakes, I did n’t bear him no grudge. Says I, ‘ Pining, you mind yo’ own business, next time, and I’m yo’ friend; ’ an’ sho’ enough, so he found me, when Framer come a-cuttin’ an’ a-tearin’ down here, with his pistol an’ his knife sot fur vengeance, an’ Pining come a-runnin’ to me, like a skeered rabbit. Lord ! ” — and here Mrs. Bent took her brush out of her mouth to indulge in a passing laugh — “ how his long legs did fetch him, and Framer after him !

“ Says 1, ‘ Git behine me, Pups, and Framer’s bullet shall riddle me afore it tetches you,’ which Pining did.

“ Framer was mighty mad, I tell you. When he come in to breakfast he said some onperlite things about women’s meddlesomeness ; an’ he said ’em loud, so’s Bent might hear ’em.”

“ ‘ Why, Framer,’ says I, ’ ain’t you ashame o’ yo’self! Bent ain’t in this fuss, an’ you can’t bring him in it. He’s the peaceablest, onquarrelsomest man alive. I don’t say so ’kase he’s my husband, —I say so ’kase he is. An’ I don’t care what man, woman, or child wants my purtection, they ’re welcome ; ef anybody wants to git behine me, they kin git. I ain’t a-goin’ to have no shootin’. an’ no cuttin’, an’ no Ku-Klux, nor nothin’ disreputable ’bout Bent’s Hotel, you better b’lieve.’

“ But law, Framer war n’t to blame; fur you see, Pining was at his old tricks, a-lyin’ by wire. What must the fool do — you b’lieve me? — but telegraph down to the powers in office that Framer was a-runnin’ his engine at the rate of forty mile an hour, which he was forbidden to run more ’n twenty. But, Lord ! as I told Framer, a fool an’ a half could a-seed that was a lie,” said Mrs. Bent, waxing intensely emphatic with the irresistible force of her argument; “for this here branch road ain’t more ’n twenty miles long, an’ WHERE is Framer to git his forty miles to run, thouten he goes down on to the main road, where he don’t b’long ? I did n’t think’t was reasonable-like Pining ought to be shot fur sich a fool lie as that.”

A pause followed this climax. The moonlight had given place to daylight, and a faint stir in the adjoining rooms announced the awakening of the inmates.

“ Well,” said Mrs. Bent, with an audible yawn, as she wrapped her black bottle carefully in a rag, and bestowed it in its cranny, “ I see it’s plum’ daylight, an’ I must go mix.”

What she might mean by this mysterious announcement I had not time to inquire, for her movements were so brisk that almost as she spoke the words she was out of the door.

Some moments passed before she reappeared. Meantime through an opposite door entered a pale, youngish woman, dressed in a calico intensely pink which was bedecked with ribbons of an intense green. She was followed by an elderly woman with weak eyes, and two sickly children ; then came an untidy, half-grown girl, who proceeded to pull the sallow twins out of their bed, and to dress them in a lazy, loitering way, against which neither the twins themselves nor any one else seemed disposed to remonstrate. The youngish woman in the pink calico and the elderly woman with the weak eyes sat down, and began an animated discussion on the ills that flesh is heir to.

By this time Mrs. Bent returned. She had put on her stockings and her own proper shoes, and the white cotton skirt and sack had given place to a smart yellow gingham with many ruffles. In her hand she carried a very dingy tin pint-cup, with an iron spoon, and I knew intuitively that this dread cup contained the “ mix.”

“ Laws, cousin ’Mandy Jane,” said she to the dead-and-alive woman in the pink calico, “ I must say you do improve every day you stay. Folks need n’t tell me this is sich an onhealthy spot. An’ ef you put yo’ daily dependence in this here mix, nobody need n’t never have a chill. Have a dose, cousin ’Mandy Jane ? ”

Cousin ’Mandy Jane obediently swallowed the proffered spoonful, and sank back upon her chair with the proud consciousness of having done her duty to herself, leaving Mrs. Bent to administer a dose in succession to each child. This occupied some little time, for the children made a brave but ineffectual resistance.

When at last helpless infancy had succumbed to the determined dispenser of this elixir, I perceived that my hour had struck. The fell enchantress with the fatal bowl approached. She filled the spoon, and extended it towards me with confident benevolence painted on her countenance ; but I, summoning all my strength of character, politely declined.

“ What! ” exclaimed Mrs. Bent, with mingled surprise and chagrin. “ You surely don’t mean to refuse this here physic? It ain’t none o’ them easy doses that don’t signify ; it has got a strength and a flavor that stands by you long after it’s swallowed. Better try it.”

Again I thanked Mrs. Bent, but shook my head. I was not ill, I said.

The would-be Samaritan turned away mournfully, and offered a dose first to the elderly woman, and then to the untidy girl, each of whom, more complaisant than myself, swallowed the contents of the spoon promptly, and with wry faces that amply testified to the strength and flavor of the compound.

“ Ah,” said Mrs. Bent, encouragingly, “ it’s a sho’ sign that physic is good for something when it riles the stomach that way.”

If this was true, she must have felt gratified at the effect the “mix” had upon the twins. The sputtering and lamenting they made awoke the woman with the baby.

“ What is that you are all taking?” she asked, with that reverent interest in dosing characteristic of women with babies.

“ A mixture ’ginst chills,” answered Mrs. Bent, promptly, and holding out the iron spoon brimful. “ Better take some. Ef you ain’t got ’em a’ready, you ’re as likely as the next one to git ’em some time.”

“ It ’s the squarest thing a-goin’,” chimed in the elderly woman, wiping her lips with approbation. “ Fur givin’ one a backbone of a mornin’, it beats all.”

Cousin ’Mandy Jane corroborated this testimony with a solemnly emphatic shake of the head; and the untidy girl declared, with a shudder, that it was “ the ’bominablest stuff, to be sho ! ” — an expression evidently intended as the loudest praise, and accepted as such.

“In course it is!” assented Mrs. Bent, complacently. “’T wouldn’t be good fur nothin’, ef it was n’t.”

The woman with the baby, having paused to hear all this in staring, openmouthed, credulous silence, now took the spoon, and bravely swallowed its contents ; this done, she immediately administered a dose to her infant.

“ That’s what I call sensible, now,” said Mrs. Bent, with glowing approval.

“ Sensible ? I should say sensible,” chimed in cousin ’Mandy Jane and the elderly woman; and then everybody looked at me.

“ Give me,” cried Mrs. Bent, enthusiastically, — “ give me my bottle o’ snuff, a spring o’ clear water, an’ this here mix, an’ I don’t care where you set me down ! ”

“ Declare to man, cousin Nancy,” said cousin’Mandy Jane, “you must tell me what you make it outen ! ”

“To be sho!” responded Mrs. Bent, with generous warmth. “ I takes a little gin, an’ a little assafœtidy, an’ a little senny, to begin with, an’ I adds snakeroot, an’ boneset, an’ dogwood, an’ willer-bark, an’ sweet-gum balls, an’ red pepper an’ sage in plenty, an’ simmers ’m to a stew-like, an’ then I fling in a little long sweetenin’ ” (molasses).

“ Every one o’ them things is good,” remarked the elderly woman, with an air of authority and a withering look directed at me.

“To be sho!” said Mrs. Bent, loudly. “ An’ when they ’re put in a mix they ’re a Power”

“ Law ! ” cried cousin ’Mandy Jane, “ I wonder, now, ef ’t ain’t good fur rheumatiz an’ asthmy ! ”

“In course it is!” assented Mrs. Bent, pugnaciously. “ It’s good fur a’most anything. It’s good to cure, an’ it’s better still to prevent. Stands to reason them that’s well oughtn’t to refuse it, no more ’n them that’s ill. Have some ? ” said she to me again, with a sort of aggressive appeal in voice and look.

Again I had the hardihood to decline ; after the conversation I had just heard I was less disposed than ever to taste her panacea.

“ Better try it,” she urged, with undaunted benevolence. “The chills is a gainin’ ground, an’ you look mighty peaked-like.”

But even this argumentum ad fœminam failed to conquer my obduracy, and Mrs. Bent, with an aggrieved sigh, walked away. The look she gave me as she went might have moved a stone to the act of deglutition. I confess that it brought a blush to my impenitent cheeks, it said so plainly, “ Turn, sinner, turn ; why will ye die ? ”

“ I ’ve known folks to refuse this before,” Mrs. Bent remarked, in a loud aside to cousin ’Mandy Jane, “ but they allers lived to see their foolishness.”

Thereupon cousin ’Mandy Jane and the elderly woman began, each one, to describe her own peculiar ailments : the former suffered from a “goneness,” and the latter was troubled with a " flustering-like;” but both agreed loudly that cousin Nancy Bent’s infallible “mix” had “ helped them a power.”

In the midst of this conversation a cracked bell rang clamorously, and forthwith up jumped the elderly woman, cousin ’Mandy Jane, the untidy girl, the twins, and the woman with the baby in her arms. The blind, unquestioning faith with which that young mother obeyed every impulse brought to bear upon her at Bent’s Hotel aroused my envy. She could lie down to sweetest slumbers upon that untidy bed; she could swallow in serene security that nauseous antidote to miasmatic poison; and, most admirable, most enviable, of all, she could eat with confidence that woeful fried breakfast, concocted in the revolting little kitchen facing the outer door. I was sorely weary of my splitbottomed chair, yet I did not move. I had expected to arrive at my destination long before that hour, and so had traveled unprovided with luncheon ; yet those leaden biscuit reeking with lard and saleratus, that weak and muddy drink misnamed coffee, that gross fried bacon, had not the power to beguile the sense of “ goneness ” that I am sure cousin ’Mandy Jane never suffered from more than I did at that moment.

“ That ’ar bell is fur breakfast,” said Mrs. Bent, turning back at the door. “ Better come eat. Yo’ train don’t come down till nine o’clock, ’long of change of schedule; and it don’t go back till twelve. You’ll be as empty as a peapod in the dry drought before you git where you ’re goin’.”

I thanked the good soul, but excused myself upon the plea that I had no appetite so early in the morning.

“ Ah,” said Mrs. Bent, nodding her head sagaciously at her kinswoman in the pink calico, “ jest like you was, cousin ‘Mandy Jane, — a goneness ; ” then to me, “ You’d better a-took that mix ; ’t would a-made you hongry, leastwise, ef only to take the taste outen yo’ mouth.”

To this I replied that if I could have some water to bathe my face I should do very well.

Mrs. Bent withdrew. I saw her and cousin ’Mandy Jane shaking their heads in grave disapproval, and I heard Mrs. Bent say, in a voice that might have proclaimed my doom from the housetop, “No food, an’ no physic; sich is not long fur this world.”

Whether Mrs. Bent ate with imprudent rapidity, or whether she postponed her breakfast to a more convenient season, I know not ; but presently she returned to me, bringing a tin basin full of water that was none of the clearest, and a towel upon the appearance of which I forbear to comment.

“ There ! ” said she, as she deposited basin and towel upon the pine chest under the window. “ The spring is fur to tote from, an’ so I don’t waste that water on face-washin’; creek water’s plenty good fur that.”

I had just taken off my linen duster, a garment of a peculiar cut, with cape and sleeves combined ; and Mrs. Bent’s hands being free of the basin and towel, she immediately seized upon the wrap, and, without asking permission, put it on, turning herself about to see the effect, and talking volubly all the time.

“ What in the name o’ wonder do they call this thing ? ” she questioned.

“ I ’ve been a-watchin’ it ever sence daylight, an’ I ’lowed to cousin ’Mandy Jane I’d have a try at it, ef I had to invite you to take it off. I allers tries on passengers’ clo’es, so ’s to git at the fashions. I’ve got a new pupple caliker, now, to make — but this is the outbeatenest concern ; blamed ef I kin make head nor tail on it. ’T ain’t no basque,

I kin see fur myself. It’s more like to a polonuy. But I ’ll ’low ef you had cows to milk you’d find sich a cut powerful ill-convenient.”

I explained that the garment was a great convenience in traveling, as it protected my dress from dust.

Upon this the observant Mrs. Bent eyed me critically, and not approvingly, from head to foot. “Well, live an’ larn ! ” she exclaimed. “ All this waste of bran’ new material to spare that dress o’ yourn from dust, which it is none of the newest. But ’t ain’t everybody, as I often say, what has the gift of management,” she added indulgently, as she laid aside the disapproved cloak. “ An’ now, ef you ’re done with that ’ar tin basin, I ’m ready to milk my cows. Ef they was n’t the kindliest pups in the world, I could n’t milk ’em in a hurry, as I do. For a body must skip ’roun’ an’ be spry, to git things done here of a mornin’ ; an’ specially to-day, sence the branch train comes in all out o’ sorts, so to speak, with change of schedule ; an’ Framer, he’s a whistlin’ this minute up to Raney’s Station.”

Mrs. Bent, having emptied the washbasin, forthwith began to skip through the weedy garden — literally to skip, for the weeds were high — to the small patch of woods where her starveling cows were tamely waiting.

I felt, as I watched this agile little body clearing the weeds with the washbasin tucked under her arm, that I had done wisely to decline food and physic; nevertheless, the pangs of unappeased hunger made me faint, and I looked with impatience for the coming of the train that was to bear me away. When at last the belligerent Framer, engineer on the branch road, blew his defiant whistle, everybody (except, perhaps, the craven Pining) rushed to the front to witness that never-palling spectacle of a train arriving. I confess to the weakness of following the mob. My short experience in Mrs. Bent’s company had taught me that when one is in Rome it is well to do as Romans do—so far as one can. My unconquerable prejudices had forced me to decline the matutinal dose and the indigestible breakfast; but it was plain that I could gain nothing by remaining in that unsavory little room while all the world at Bent’s, even the cats, the dogs, the turkey with the broken wing, and the miserable hobbling goat, were standing under the free heaven, in the morning breeze, to watch the train sweep round the curve.

Mrs. Bent was in glory. “Hooray! ” she cried, hilariously, as the engine came to a standstill. “ Shoot who, Framer, with yo’ belt an’ yo’ pistols ? Ef you had n’t a-held up steam so tight, man, as you come around, you ‘d a shot down the main-road fur your forty miles an hour, sho’s a gun ! ”

This sally was loudly rewarded by a laugh; but Mrs. Bent, unmoved by the prosperity of her jest, immediately turned her attention to a matter of graver import.

“ Call this lonesome ? ” she exclaimed, excitedly. “Jest you look there, cousin ‘Mandy Jane ! One, two, three, four, five, six! Yes, six ladies, young an’ old, tall an short, an’ every last one on ’em rigged in the fashion ! Nary one on ’em can’t git away from yere, leastwise afore ten o’clock to-night, an’ ’twixt ’em all I’m certain sho to pick up a style fur my new popple caliker.”

Among these six ladies was one whom I knew ; and most fortunately for me, she wisely traveled with a well-provided lunch-basket and a contrivance for making her own coffee. I dare say that my “ peaked ” look and my general air of “goneness” appealed to this good lady’s compassion, for she immediately offered me breakfast, — a kindness that I was not slow to accept.

While we were boiling the coffee with great care and diligence, having to battle with a breeze that Mrs. Bent would have called “ ill-convenient,” in walked that bustling little woman, probably with a view of studying the cut of my friend’s polonaise. The intrusion, under the circumstances, was most embarrassing : not that I objected to sharing with her the invigorating cup whose tempting aroma now filled the room ; but I would fain have escaped her detection while breakfasting thus surreptitiously, as it were, on better fare than she could give me.

Mrs. Bent, however, manifested no displeasure. “ I ’lowed you ‘d not hold out to go empty to yo’ journey’s end,” said she, with open satisfaction. “ Why don’t you keep that do’ shot to, to fend off the win’? But, sakes! it’s small use fightin’ the win’ behine a do’, with cracks all round you. I’d a-knowed that was coffee you ’re a-makin’ by the smell ; strong’s lye, which is a waste o’ material. I’ve seen them pocket tricks afore this. We’d a nexpress agent on this road, oncst, what kep’ one, an’ biled his own coffee. Some folks is cu’rous an’ on settled-like ’bout their eatin’, you know, an’ this chap was allers doctorin’ his cookin’, as I usened to say, ’stead o’ doctorin’ hisself. I never could git that po’ crittur to swallow a drap o’ mix, and the consequence was he never had the stomach to sit down to table’s long’s he stopped here.”

“ “Will you not take a cup of coffee with me, Mrs. Bent?” I asked, my cheeks burning with guilty blushes, which I trusted she would attribute to the flame of the alcohol-lamp.

“No; I’m ’bliged to you,” said she, with a compassionate air. " I allers thinks there’s something or ’nother out o’ jint with stomachs what craves things so fussy. I kin drink my coffee naturallike, myself, I’m thankful to say; but I makes ’lowance fur them what can’t.”

And with this parting thrust my voluble hostess left me. Poor woman! Before I traveled that way again, she was dead; a victim, I fear, to the combined effects of miasma, the " mix,” and the baleful contents of that black junkbottle which she kept in the cranny beneath the window.

E. W. Bellamy.