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“Why not o’ me?” demanded Mrs. Bridges, showing something of her resentment. “What you been talkin’ an’ harpin’ about her all day for, if you wasn’t hintin’ for me to take her in?”

“I never thought o’ such a thing,” repeated her visitor, still looking rather helplessly dazed. “I talked about it because it was on my mind, heavy, too; an’, I guess, because I wanted to talk my conscience down.”

Mrs. Bridges cooled off a little and folded her hands over the bedpost.

“Well, if you wasn’t hintin’,” she said, in a conciliatory tone, “it’s all right. You kep’ harpin’ on the same string till I thought you was; an’ it riles me offul to be hinted at. I’ll take anything right out to my face, so’s I can answer it, but I won’t be hinted at. But why”—having rid herself of the grievance she at once swung around to the insult—“why didn’t you think o’ me?”

Mrs. Hanna cleared her throat and began to unroll her mitts.

“Well, I don’t know just why,” she replied, helplessly. She drew the mitts on, smoothing them well up over her thin wrists. “I don’t know why, I’m sure. I’d thought o’ most ev’rybody in the neighborhood—but you never come into my head onct. I was as innocent o’ hintin’ as a babe unborn.”