“It’s late, Granny love! Tell me—did he mind?” Turning, she found Thurley waiting to say good night to her. She came and peeked over Betsey’s shoulder at the old wagon. “Good-by, funny home,” she kissed her finger tips to it. “I sha’n’t forget you—not even if I drive into the Corners the next time in a limousine with a footman.” * * * * * After Miss Clergy and Thurley had left the Corners, Hopeful and Ali Baba took the day off to get out an extra of their own as to what had happened. “ ... dressed in a black silk forty-year old she was and a hat to match and all her rings on her fingers and the same hobnail boots,” Ali Baba informed Corners loungers, “but as chirp as if she’d never gone to ruin for over thirty years about an Eyetalian barber—poor Miss Abby! And I bet my hat, she’ll have new clothes and be as up to snuff as they make ’em when she gets to New York.... Thurley? Oh, her own self with a pink dress and a white shade hat and Miss Abby sayin’ to her, ‘We’ll only be shabby a little while longer. It isn’t goin’ to take us long to learn new ways.’ Thurley’s eyes was as blue as the sea and she kept starin’ out beyond everybody and goodness only knows what she was thinkin’ ... anyhow, they’re gone! We’ve orders to close the house and blest if she didn’t have our cousin Betsey Pilrig come to live with us—as good a thing as Miss Abby has done in over thirty years—for it will take the heart from Betsey to lose Thurley, too! When Dan Birge knows that Abby Clergy has stole his girl and she isn’t goin’ to marry him no more’n a terrier’ll leave a badger hole, I guess for the first time in history a Birge will be so sore he’ll have to ride in a rubber-tired cab!” Conscious of being the courier of a thrilling event, Ali Baba nonchalantly borrowed tobacco and strolled on to spread the glad tidings. Even a mystery or a haunted lady becomes a bore after a certain time. It is like a jolly week-end guest who, without invitation, spends the entire season in one’s only and best pink room. So had Miss Clergy become a nonentity to the town—“a pity,” the older people said, “a pill” retorted the younger.