I don't know what she done to her, but presoom that she held her with
her eye. It is a firm and glitterin' one as I ever see.

Anyway, she put a damper onto that cook, and turns it jest when she is
a mind to--to the benefit of her boarders; for better vittles wuz never
cooked than Miss Plank furnishes her boarders at moderate rates and the
comforts of a home, as advertisements say.

Her house wuz kep clean and sweet too, which wuz indeed a boon.

She talked a sight about her husband, which I don't know as she could
help--anyway, I guess she didn't try to.

She told me the first oppurtunity what a good Christian he wuz, how
devoted to her, and how much property he laid up, and that he wuz "in
salt."

I thought for quite a spell she meant brine, and dassent hardly enquire
into the particulars, not knowin' what she had done by the departed,
widders are so queer.

But after she had mentioned to me more'n a dozen times her love for the
departed, and his industrious and prosperous ways, and tellin' me every
single time, "he wuz in salt," I found out that she meant that he wuz in
the salt trade--bought and sold, I spozed.

I felt better.

But oh, how she did love to talk about that man; truly she used his
sirname to connect us to the vast past, and to the mysterious future. We