The hunchback looked up quickly and sharpened his mouth to speak. "Why, this is a lay-low to catch meddlers."
The hunchback readied in the box with his scrambly little fingers and ate something, but he offered no one around him a taste. It was not even proper snuff which he was taking, but a mixture of sugar and cocoa. This he took, though, as snuff, pocketing a little wad of it beh his lower lip and lig dowly into this with a flick of his tongue which made a frequent grimae over his face.
"The very teeth in my head have always tasted sour to me," he said in explanation. "That is the reason why I take this kind of sweet snuff."
The group still clustered around, feeling somewhat gawky and bewildered. This sensation never quite wore off, but it was soon tempered by another feeling -- an air of intima the room and a vague festivity. Now the names of the men of the group there on that evening were as follows: Hasty Malone, Robert Calvert Hale, Merlie Ryan, Reverend T. M. Willin, Rosser e, Rip Wellborn, Henry Ford Crimp, and Horace Wells. Except for Reverend Willin, they are all alike in many ways as has been said -- all having taken pleasure from something or other, all havi and suffered in some way, most of them tractable unless exasperated. Each of them worked in the mill, and lived with others in a two- or three-room house for which the rent was ten dollars or twelve dollars a month. All had been paid that afternoon, for it was Saturday. So, for the present, think of them as a whole.
The hunchback, however, was already s them out in his mind. Onfortably settled he began to chat with everyone, asking questions such as if a man was married, how old he was, how much his wages came to in an average week, et cetera -- pig his way along to inquiries which were dht intimate. Soon the group was joined by others iown, Henry Macy, idlers who had sensed somethiraordinary, women e to fetch their men who lingered on, and even one loose, towhead child who tiptoed into the store, stole a box of animal crackers, and made off very quietly. So the premises of Miss Amelia were soon crowded, and she herself had not yet opened her office door.
There is a type of person who has a quality about him that sets him apart from other and more ordinary human beings. Such a person has an instinct which is usually found only in small children, an instinct to establish immediate and vital tact between himself and all things in the world. Certainly the hunchback was of this type. He had only been iore half an hour before an immediate tact had beeablished between him and each other individual. It was as though he had lived iown for years, was a well-known character, and had been sitting and talking there on that guano sack for tless evenings. This, together with the fact that it was Saturday night, could at for the air of freedom and illicit gladness iore. There was a tension, also, partly because of the oddity of the situation and because Miss Amelia was still closed off in her offid had not yet made her appearance.
She came out that evening at ten oclock. And those who were expeg some drama at her entrance were disappointed. She opehe door and walked in with her slow, gangling swagger. There was a streak of ink on one side of her nose, and she had khe red handkerchief about her neck. She seemed to notiothing unusual. Her gray, crossed eyes glanced over to the place where the hunchback was sitting, and for a moment lihere. The res