ppy."

"Oh, yes; Mr. Putney. I heard you tellin' my wife."

"Who _is_ Mr. Putney, any way?" asked the _Events_' man.

"Mr. Putney?" the host repeated, with a glance at his wife, as if for
instruction or correction in case he should go wrong. "He's one of the
old Hatboro' Putneys, here."

"All of 'em preserved in liquor, the same way?"

"Well, no, I can't say as they are." The host laughed, but not with much
liking, apparently. His wife did not laugh at all, and the young man
perceived that he had struck a false note.

"Pity," he said, "to see a man like that, goin' that way. He said more
bright things in five minutes, drunk as he was, than I could say in a
month on a strict prohibition basis."

The good understanding was restored by this ready self-abasement. "Well,
I d' know as you can say that, exactly," said the hostess, "but he is
bright, there ain't any two ways about it. And he ain't always that way
you see him. It's just one of his times, now. He has 'em about once in
every four or five months, and the rest part he's just as straight as
anybody. It's like a disease, as I tell my husband."

"I guess if he was a mind to steady up, there ain't any lawyer could go
ahead of him, well, not in _this_ town," said the husband.

"Seems to be pretty popular as it is," said the young man. "What makes
him so down on Mr. Northwick?"

"Well, I dunno," said the host, "_what_ it is. He's always been so. I
presume it's more the kind of a man Mr. Northwick is, than what it is
anything else."

"Why, what kind of a man _is_ Mr. Northwick, any way?" the young man
asked, beginning to give his attention to the pie, which the woman had
now brought. "He don't seem to be so popular. What's the reason."

"Well, I don't know as I could say, exactly. I presume, one thing, he's
only been here summers till this year, since his wife died, and he never
did have much to do with the place, before."

"What's he living here for this winter? Economizing?"

"No; I guess he no need to do that," the host answered.

His wife looked knowing, and said with a laugh, "I guess Miss Sue
Northwick could tell you if she was a mind to."

"Oh, I see," said the reporter, with an irreverence that seemed to be
merely provisional and held subject to instant exchange for any more
available attitude. "Young man in the case. Friendless minister whose
slippers require constant attention?"

"I guess he ain't very friendless," said the hostess, "as far fo