She sat down near the door on the darling little old hair-covered trunk that had been Great-grandfather’s, and watched the two old women at work.  The first cookie had disappeared now, and the second was well on the way.  She felt a great appeasement in her insides.  She leaned back against the old dresses hung on the wall and drew a long breath.

“Well,” said Aunt Hetty, “you’ve got neighbors up your way, so they tell me.  Funny thing, a city man coming up here to live.  He’ll never stick it out.  The summer maybe.  But that’s all.  You just see, come autumn, if he don’t light out for New York again.”

Elly made no comment on this.  She often heard her elders say that she was not a talkative child, and that it was hard to get anything out of her.  That was because mostly they wanted to know about things she hadn’t once thought of noticing, and weren’t a bit interested when she tried to talk about what she had noticed.  Just imagine trying to tell Aunt Hetty about that poor old gray snow-bank out in her woods, all lonely and scrumpled up!  She went on eating her cookie.

“How does he like it, anyhow?” asked Aunt Hetty, bending the upper part of her out of the window to shake something.  “And what kind of a critter is he?”

“Well, he’s rather an old man,” said Elly.  She added conscientiously, trying to be chatty, “Paul’s crazy about him.  He goes over there all the time to visit.  I like him all right.  The old man seems to like it here all right.  They both of them do.”

“Both?” said Aunt Hetty, curving herself back into the room again.

“Oh, the other one isn’t going to live here, like Mr. Welles.  He’s just come to get Mr. Welles settled, and to make him a visit.  His name is Mr. Marsh.”

“Well, what’s he like?” asked Aunt Hetty, folding together the old wadded petticoat she had been shaking.

“Oh, he’s all right too,” said Elly.  She wasn’t going to say anything about that funny softness of his hands, she didn’t like, because that would be like speaking about the snow-drift; something Aunt Hetty would just laugh at, and call one of her notions.

“Well, what do they do with themselves, two great hulking men set off by themselves?”

Elly tried seriously to remember what they did do.  “I don’t see them, of course, much in the morning before I go to school.  I guess they get up and have their breakfast, the way anybody does.”

Aunt Hetty snorted a little, “Gracious, child, a person needs a corkscrew to get anything out of you.  I mean all day, with no chores, or farmin’, or anything.”

“I don’t know,” Elly confessed.  “Mr. Clark, of course, he’s busy cooking and washing dishes and keeping house, but . . .”

“Are there three of them?” Aunt Hetty stopped her dudsing in her astonishment.  “I thought you said two.”