This conversation took place the evenin’ previous to our departure from Ebenezer’ses, but I did not forget it. And when we arrived at the village where Lank lived, it being after ten o’clock, Josiah said he guessed he would go right down to the store where he worked, so’s to see him and I might go in and call on Delila Ann. A small white-headed boy, with two breeches held up by one gallus, told me where they lived, the same boy offerin’ to hitch my horse fer me. It had been a number of years since I had seen Delila Ann and I didn’t s’pose I should know her, Ebenezer said she had changed so. He said she had that sort of anxious, haggard, dissatisfied, kinder sheepish, kinder bold look, that folks always get by puttin’ on aperiences. I’ve hearn and I believe it is as wearin’ a job as you can get into, to foller from year to year. And Delila Ann havin’ been puttin’ ’em on (the aperiences) for upwards of twenty years, was wore down, as Ebenezer said, to skin and bone. The hull house and furniture had the look it always wears when anybody is engaged in the aperience business. A sort of gaudy and flashy cut, dreadful thin and hazy look. The front door had it bad. The knob was broke off; the latch was gone; two of the panels was ready to fall out, besides a place to the bottom big enough for a cat to crawl under. It rode back on one hinge and that was as shaky as shaky could be. There didn’t seem to be anything whole and secure about the door, except the key-hole. But they had a bran new bell on it and a new brass plate, bearin’ Lank’s name in bold, noble letters, which, I s’pose, was a comfort to the family and lifted ’em above the small afflictions of the snow and rain that entered at will, and when it was a mind to. The white-haired boy, with the solitary and lonesome gallus, says to me, as he stood waitin’ for the ten-cent bill I wuz a-gettin’ for him out of my pork-money: “That door needs mendin’ bad.” I gave him his bill, and he started off and I was just a-musin’ over his last words, and thinkin’ dreamily, that Lank’s best way would be to take the key-hole and get a new door made to it, when the hired girl came to the door. I could see, that by livin’ in a house devoted to the aperiences, she, too, had ketched the same look. She had the same sort of thin, hazy look onto her, besides bein’ in poor order as to flesh, real bony and haggard. Her face was done up in an old green baize veil, for the toothache. I told her who I was and she seemed to be kinder frustrated and said she’d go in and tell the family. Left me right there a-standin’ on my feet; and I, not knowin’ how long she would be gone, thought I would set down, for it always tires me to stand any length of time on my feet.