Miss Mehetabels Son | Page 3

a lank, narrow-chested man, past sixty, with sparse,
steel-gray hair, and small, deep-set eyes, perfectly round, like a fish's,
and of no particular color. His chief personal characteristics seemed to
be too much feet and not enough teeth. His sharply cut, but rather
simple face, as he turned it towards me, wore a look of interrogation. I
replied to his mute inquiry by taking out my pocket-book and handing
him my business-card, which he held up to the candle and perused with
great deliberation.
"You 're a civil engineer, are you?" he said, displaying his gums, which
gave his countenance an expression of almost infantile innocence. He
made no further audible remark, but mumbled between his thin lips
something which an imaginative person might have construed into "If
you 're at civil engineer, I 'll be blessed if I would n't like to see an
uncivil one!"
Mr. Sewell's growl, however, was worse than his bite--owing to his
lack of teeth probably--for he very good-naturedly set himself to work
preparing supper for me. After a slice of cold ham, and a warm punch,
to which my chilled condition gave a grateful flavor, I went to bed in a
distant chamber in a most amiable mood, feeling satisfied that Jones
was a donkey to bother himself about his identity.
When I awoke, the sun was several hours high. My bed faced a window,
and by raising myself on one elbow I could look out on what I expected
would be the main street. To my astonishment I beheld a lonely country
road winding up a sterile hill and disappearing over the ridge. In a
cornfield at the right of the road was a small private graveyard,
enclosed by a crumbling stonewall with a red gate. The only thing
suggestive of life was this little corner lot occupied by death. I got out
of bed and went to the other window. There I had an uninterrupted
view of twelve miles of open landscape, with Mount Agamenticus in
the purple distance. Not a house or a spire in sight. "Well," I exclaimed,
"Greenton does n't appear to be a very closely packed metropolis!" That
rival hotel with which I had threatened Mr. Sewell overnight was not a

deadly weapon, looking at it by daylight. "By Jove!" I reflected,
"maybe I 'm in the wrong place." But there, tacked against a panel of
the bedroom door, was a faded time-table dated Greenton, August 1,
1839.
I smiled all the time I was dressing, and went smiling down stairs,
where I found Mr. Sewell, assisted by one of the fair sex in the first
bloom of her eightieth year, serving breakfast for me on a small
table--in the bar-room!
"I overslept myself this morning," I remarked apologetically, "and I see
that I am putting you to some trouble. In future, if you will have me
called, I will take my meals at the usual table de hôte."
"At the what?" said Mr. Sewell.
"I mean with the other boarders."
Mr. Sewell paused in the act of lifting a chop from the fire, and, resting
the point of his fork against the woodwork of the mantelpiece, grinned
from ear to ear.
"Bless you! there is n't any other boarders. There has n't been anybody
put up here sence--let me see--sence father-in-law died, and that was in
the fall of '40. To be sure, there 's Silas; he's a regular boarder; but I
don't count him."
Mr. Sewell then explained how the tavern had lost its custom when the
old stage line was broken up by the railroad. The introduction of steam
was, in Mr. Sewell's estimation, a fatal error. "Jest killed local business.
Carried it off, I 'm darned if I know where. The whole country has been
sort o' retrograding ever sence steam was invented."
"You spoke of having one boarder," I said.
"Silas? Yes; he come here the summer 'Tilda died--she that was 'Tilda
Bayley--and he 's here yet, going on thirteen year. He could n't live any
longer with the old man. Between you and I, old Clem Jaffrey, Silas's

father, was a hard nut. Yes," said Mr. Sewell, crooking his elbow in
inimitable pantomime, "altogether too often. Found dead in the road
hugging a three-gallon demijohn. Habeas corpus in the barn," added
Mr. Sewell, intending, I presume, to intimate that a post-mortem
examination had been deemed necessary. "Silas," he resumed, in that
respectful tone which one should always adopt when speaking of
capital, "is a man of considerable property; lives on his interest, and
keeps a hoss and shay. He 's a great scholar, too, Silas; takes all the
pe-ri-odicals and the Police Gazette regular."
Mr. Sewell was turning over a third chop, when the door opened and a
stoutish, middle-aged little gentleman, clad