Page:Weird Tales v01n02 (1923-04).djvu/171

170 "No; not with no 'e' on to it! That would be cooky! It was jes' plain Cook—C-o-o-k."

I was willing to let it go at that and wrote it down. "And your first name now?"

"My fust name? I don't tell my fust name to no strangers—specially men!"

"I beg your pardon, but I am not asking that from impertinence, Mrs. Cook," I explained carefully. "We do not mean to pry into people's personal affairs—such things are of no concern to us—but you see there are probably a hundred or more Cooks in this city and if we didn't have their first names there would be no telling them apart. All the ladies so far have told me their first names," I declared, holding my book toward her with the evidence.

After peering at it intently for some time she relaxed in her chair, reassured. "Well, 'tain't no name to be 'shamed of, if 'tis old-fashioned. It's Ann."

"Ann—'A-n-n'." I spelled aloud, to give her the chance to correct me if necessary. Thinking of the famous query connected with that name and thankful I didn't have to ask that, too, I continued:

"You have a husband?"

"No, not now. I've had 'em, though."

"Ah, a widow, then—that is, I presume your husband is not alive, Mrs. Cook?" I essayed gently, avoiding, as always, the direct interrogation as to grass-widowship.

"No; they're all on 'em dead now; but, Mister, my name ain't Cook—it's Hay!"

"What!" I exclaimed. "Why, I understood you to say it was Cook?"

"Well, yuh understood right. It was Cook—that what's yuh asked me, what it was—but it's Hay now.

"Bout two years after Cook went up in smoke I married a feller named Hay, see?"

H YES," I smiled cheerfully, and, reversing my pencil I endeavored to rub off the former husband's name.

Of course the flimsy paper tore. I yanked out the sheet and began again.

H-a-y,’" Hay," I put down, writing lightly with an eye to more erasures or corrections, "Just the plain, short Hay, I presume?"

"Yes, jes' th' plain Hay—not timothy ner alfalfy ner none o' them fancy hoss brekfus foods. My lan'!" she broke out in astonishment, "I sh'uld think the' comp'ny'd git men to do this work that c'uld spell!"

"That is one of the things we are told to be most careful about, Mrs.—ah—Hay. We must always ask everybody's name and just how they spell it, even if we think we know. Often people having the same sounding name spell it differently, and if it goes in the directory wrong they generally blame us. And now, may I ask," I said sympathetically, recalling the peculiar way in which she had spoken of the late Mr. Cook's decease, "if your former husband lost his life in a fire?"

"Who, Cook? Oh, yuh mean what'd I mean when I spoke o' 'im goin' up in smoke? No, he was plumb dead—I was sattyfied o' that, afore he was burned. That's th' way I've had 'em all done; kin' of a habit I got into, I reckon, but seems to me 'twas a pretty good habit. That's Cook, second from th' right-hand end," she said calmly, pointing to an object on the humble mantel as though she were indicating a specimen in a museum.

"How? What?" I gasped, as every separate hair on my head arose and tried to spring from its root-cell.

"W'y, I had all my husban's' bodies consoomed by fire—what d'yuh call it, cremated w'en they up an lef' me, an' that's the' ashes of all on 'em in them dishes there! Seems t'