We trod that Plank every day and all day, if we would listen to her.
And sometimes when I would try to get her offen that Plank for a minute, and would bring up the World's Fair to her, and how big the housen wuz, I would find my efforts futile; for all she would say about 'em wuz to tell what Mr.Plank would have done if he had been a-livin', and if he had been onhampered, and out of salt, how much better he would have done than the directors did, and what bigger housen he would have built.
And I would say, "A house that covers over most forty acres is a pretty big house." But she seemed to think that Mr.Plank would have built housen that covered a few more acres, and towered up higher, and had loftier cupalos.
And finally I got tired of tryin' to quell her down, and I got so that I could let her talk and keep up a-thinkin' on other subjects all the time.

Why, I got so I could have writ poetry, if that had been my aim, right under a constant loadin' and onloadin' of that Plank.
Curious, hain't it?
As I said, there wuz only a few boarders, most of 'em quiet folks, who had been there some time.

Some on 'em had been there long enough to have children born under the ruff, who had growed up almost as big as their pa's and ma's.

There wuz several of 'em half children there, and among 'em wuz one of the same age who wuz old--older than I shall ever be, I hope and pray.
He wuz gloomy and morbid, and looked on life, and us, with kinder mad and distrustful eyes.

Above all others, he wuz mean to his twin sister; he looked down on her and browbeat her the worst kind, and felt older than she did, and acted as if she wuz a mere child compared to him, though he wuzn't more'n five minutes older than she wuz, if he wuz that.
Their names wuz Algernon and Guenivere Piddock, but they called 'em Nony and Neny--which wuz, indeed, a comfort to bystanders.