"'Be still, my heart'!" she murmured.
"No; they went to get somebody from somewhere," pursued Fanny.
"To get somebody from somewhere," repeated Ellen impatiently. "How
thrilling! Who do you suppose it was?"
Fanny shook her head:
"I haven't the slightest idea."
"How perfectly funny! ...Is the somebody there, now?"
"I don't know. Jim won't tell me a thing that goes on there. He says
if there's anything on top of the earth he absolutely despises it's a
gossiping man. He says a gossiping woman is a creation of God--must
be, there's so many of 'em; but a gossiping man--he can't find any
word in the dictionary mean enough for that sort of a low-down
skunk."
Ellen burst into hysterical laughter.
"What an idea!" she gasped. "Oh, but he's almost too sweet to live,
Fan. Somebody ought to take him down a peg or two. Fan, if he
proposes to that girl, I hope she won't have him. 'Twould serve him
right!"
"Perhaps she won't marry anybody around here," mused Fanny. "Did you
ever notice she wears a thin gold chain around her neck, Ellen?"
Ellen nodded.
"Perhaps there's a picture of somebody on it."
"I shouldn't wonder."
Ellen impatiently kicked a big apple out of her way, to the manifest
discomfiture of two or three drunken wasps who were battening on the
sweet juices.
"I've got to go back to the house," she said. "Mother'll be looking
for me."
"But, Ellen--"
"Well?"
"You said you knew something--"
Ellen yawned.
"Did I?"
"You know you did, Ellen! Please--"
"'Twasn't much.
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