They says:

"There's several; but it's the Proctors, mainly."

"That's the name," I says; "I most forgot it.  Well, Miss Mary Jane she told me to tell you she's gone over there in a dreadful hurry—one of them's sick."

"Which one?"

"I don't know; leastways, I kinder forget; but I thinks it's—"

"Sakes alive, I hope it ain't _Hanner_?"

"I'm sorry to say it," I says, "but Hanner's the very one."

"My goodness, and she so well only last week!  Is she took bad?"

"It ain't no name for it.  They set up with her all night, Miss Mary Jane said, and they don't think she'll last many hours."

"Only think of that, now!  What's the matter with her?"

I couldn't think of anything reasonable, right off that way, so I says:

"Mumps."

"Mumps your granny!  They don't set up with people that's got the mumps."

"They don't, don't they?  You better bet they do with _these_ mumps.  These mumps is different.  It's a new kind, Miss Mary Jane said."

"How's it a new kind?"

"Because it's mixed up with other things."

"What other things?"

"Well, measles, and whooping-cough, and erysiplas, and consumption, and yaller janders, and brain-fever, and I don't know what all."

"My land!  And they call it the _mumps_?"

"That's what Miss Mary Jane said."

"Well, what in the nation do they call it the _mumps_ for?"

"Why, because it _is_ the mumps.  That's what it starts with."

"Well, ther' ain't no sense in it.  A body might stump his toe, and take pison, and fall down the well, and break his neck, and bust his brains out, and somebody come along and ask what killed him, and some numskull up and say, 'Why, he stumped his _toe_.'  Would ther' be any sense in that? _No_.  And ther' ain't no sense in _this_, nuther.  Is it ketching?"

"Is it _ketching_?  Why, how you talk.  Is a _harrow_ catching—in the dark? If you don't hitch on to one tooth, you're bound to on another, ain't you? And you can't get away with that tooth without fetching the whole harrow along, can you?  Well, these kind of mumps is a kind of a harrow, as you may say—and it ain't no slouch of a harrow, nuther, you come to get it hitched on good."

"Well, it's awful, I think," says the hare-lip.  "I'll go to Uncle Harvey and—"

"Oh, yes," I says, "I _would_.  Of _course_ I would.  I wouldn't lose no time."

"Well, why wouldn't you?"