‘That would be too confinen. I allow to get some light work to make me a dollar or so us I go along, pin money.’

‘I’d like, now, a new-laid egg for my supper, wherever I happen on to be or to stay,’ he said, looking away from Bell’s cup, looking away from Bell altogether. ‘I often say there’s not another single one thing like a new-laid egg to strengthen the stomach and make your supper set well, and that’s true too of a man that’s walked more’n fourteen miles since he had a bite. I wonder how much you’d take for one of your eggs, ma’am, or maybe two. I might not reach Colin’s before a late supper.’

‘I aim to trade these-here at the store for chewen wax. I’d get five cents worthen.’

‘Chewen wax is not a very nourishen food, and when a man’s walked twenty miles in round numbers he craves a trifle of solid food, and Colin might not be at home. Come to think on it I heared a man say a piece back on the road he seen Colin go somewheres this evening about two o’clock. I wouldn’t go to his house to stay and him not there; I’m a decent man, and maybe he might not get back till after supper is all over and put away. Colin’s wife is a fractious woman and when a meal is over it’s over in her way of thinken. She’s not a good looken woman like you and not so even tempered. She’s not got your shiny eyes. Her teeth, now, are not so well-favoured and she herself is not so well-favoured in no way or how and not so well set up.’

‘I’d be right glad to give you these-here eggs if you’d be so good as to have ’em.’

‘I’m much obliged to you, ma’am. They’re fresh I know.’

‘My name’s Bell Carrier,’ Bell said.

‘How do you do, ma’am!’

‘And who might this other lady be,’ he said, turning toward the garden.

‘That’s Ellen Chesser. She’s a Miss.’

‘I’m right glad to get acquainted, right glad. My name is J. B. Tarbell. I’m a photographer when I’m at home, but sometimes I follow house-painten.’