Miss Mehetabels Son | Page 8

day, and sometimes in the midst of complicated
calculations, I would catch myself wondering what Andy was up to
now! There was no shaking him off; he became an inseparable
nightmare to me; and I felt that if I remained much longer at Bayley's
Four-Corners I should turn into just such another bald-headed,
mild-eyed visionary as Silas Jaffrey.
Then the tavern was a grewsome old shell any way, full of
unaccountable noises after dark--rustlings of garments along
unfrequented passages, and stealthy footfalls in unoccupied chambers
overhead. I never knew of an old house without these mysterious noises.
Next to my bedroom was a musty, dismantled apartment, in one corner
of which, leaning against the wainscot, was a crippled mangle, with its
iron crank tilted in the air like the elbow of the late Mr. Clem Jaffrey.
Sometimes,
"In the dead vast and middle of the night,"
I used to hear sounds as if some one were turning that rusty crank on
the sly. This occurred only on particularly cold nights, and I conceived
the uncomfortable idea that it was the thin family ghosts, from the
neglected graveyard in the cornfield, keeping themselves warm by
running each other through the mangle. There was a haunted air about
the whole place that made it easy for me to believe in the existence of a
phantasm like Miss Mehetabel's son, who, after all, was less unearthly
than Mr. Jaffrey himself, and seemed more properly an inhabitant of

this globe than the toothless ogre who kept the inn, not to mention the
silent Witch of Endor that cooked our meals for us over the bar-room
fire.
In spite of the scowls and winks bestowed upon me by Mr. Sewell, who
let slip no opportunity to testify his disapprobation of the intimacy, Mr.
Jaffrey and I spent all our evenings together--those long autumnal
evenings, through the length of which he talked about the boy, laying
out his path in life and hedging the path with roses. He should be sent
to the High School at Portsmouth, and then to college; he should be
educated like a gentleman, Andy.
"When the old man dies," remarked Mr. Jaffrey one night, rubbing his
hands gleefully, as if it were a great joke, "Andy will find that the old
man has left him a pretty plum."
"What do you think of having Andy enter West Point, when he 's old
enough?" said Mr. Jaffrey on another occasion. "He need n't necessarily
go into the army when he graduates; he can become a civil engineer."
This was a stroke of flattery so delicate and indirect that I could accept
it without immodesty.
There had lately sprung up on the corner of Mr. Jaffrey's bureau a small
tin house, Gothic in architecture and pink in color, with a slit in the roof,
and the word Bank painted on one façade. Several times in the course
of an evening Mr. Jaffrey would rise from his chair without interrupting
the conversation, and gravely drop a nickel into the scuttle of the bank.
It was pleasant to observe the solemnity of his countenance as he
approached the edifice, and the air of triumph with which he resumed
his seat by the fireplace. One night I missed the tin bank. It had
disappeared, deposits and all, like a real bank. Evidently there had been
a defalcation on rather a large scale. I strongly suspected that Mr.
Sewell was at the bottom of it, but my suspicion was not shared by Mr.
Jaffrey, who, remarking my glance at the bureau, became suddenly
depressed. "I 'm afraid," he said, "that I have failed to instil into
Andrew those principles of integrity which--which"--and the old
gentleman quite broke down.

Andy was now eight or nine years old, and for some time past, if the
truth must be told, had given Mr. Jaffrey no inconsiderable trouble;
what with his impishness and his illnesses, the boy led the pair of us a
lively dance. I shall not soon forget the anxiety of Mr. Jaffrey the night
Andy had the scarlet-fever--an anxiety which so infected me that I
actually returned to the tavern the following afternoon earlier than
usual, dreading to hear that the little spectre was dead, and greatly
relieved on meeting Mr. Jaffrey at the door-step with his face wreathed
in smiles. When I spoke to him of Andy, I was made aware that I was
inquiring into a case of scarlet-fever that had occurred the year before!
It was at this time, towards the end of my second week at Greenton,
that I noticed what was probably not a new trait--Mr. Jaffrey's curious
sensitiveness to atmospherical changes. He was as sensitive as a
barometer. The approach of a storm sent his mercury down instantly.
When the weather was fair he