The Henchman | Page 6

stammered a husky reply, and blushed far into his brick-colored hair. He was of an age when a babyish diminutive becomes a thorn unspeakable. Mrs. Weatherwax glanced tranquilly past his writhings to the ancient table.
"Ross," she asked, "wa'n't that your grandfather's?"
"Yes. He used it in his place of business."
"I call to mind seein' it in the old distillery when I was a girl," pursued the widow, who never called a spade an agricultural implement. "Distillin's a wicked business."
"People thought differently about many things in my grandfather's day."
The widow sniffed. "Wrong's wrong. Is that Seneca Bowers's roll-top desk?"
"It was Mr. Bowers's. I bought it when we dissolved partnership."
"Law books, too?"
"Yes."
"Threw in the pictur's, I s'pose?" indicating some dingy lithographs of political worthies past and present.
"Yes," admitted Shelby with superhuman good nature; "they came to boot."
The widow sniffed again. "'Pears to me," said she, "you've got nothin' new."
The man wheeled in his chair to a neighboring safe and took a tape-bound document from a pigeon-hole.
"Shall we begin?" he asked.
"Yes--if you're so rushed," she returned, and composed her features to fitting solemnity. As the lawyer slowly read the instrument, which he could have rattled off from memory, Mrs. Weatherwax punctuated the pious phrases of its exordium with approving wags. "'Frail and transitory,'" she interpolated; "that's jest what life is. I might be took any minute." At the reference to the payment of her lawful debts she recovered her spirits sufficiently to put in that she did not owe a "red cent," as everybody knew. Finally she called a halt. "Needn't go any farther," she directed. "The first part's what I like to hear best. Exceptin' one thing, all the rest about my green rep sofy a-goin' to Cousin Phoebe, the pickle-caster to Brother Henry, the old dishes what can't be sold to my beloved nephew, Jason Weatherwax, and my best tablecloths and sheets and pillow-slips to his little Ann Eliza when she gets a husband what's a good provider, is fixed jest as it hed ought to be. What I want now is a postscript."
"Another codicil? Very well."
He made note of her wishes concerning a cherished feather bed which it had struck her was too good for that "shiftless coot," Cousin Phoebe's husband, to lie upon, and, bidding her bring her witnesses on the morrow, bustled the will into his safe and fell upon his papers after the manner of all lawyer kind since Chaucer's sergeant of the law who "semed besier than he was."
The widow eyed his movements placidly.
"In a stew to hev me go?" she asked.
"Of course not," Shelby protested. "What put that in your head?"
"Your squirmin' round. Seein' I'm entirely welcome, I'll set a piece."
Shelby restrained the delight he said he felt and returned to his papers under her relentless scrutiny.
"Telegraphs of congratulashun, I s'pose," the visitor presently observed.
"Yes; my friends are rejoicing with me."
"Everybody tickled?"
"All but the common enemy, I trust."
"I ain't hed a chance to go about much and ask," said the widow, with a preliminary sniff; "but I've met some as wa'n't tickled or enemies neither."
"No? Well, after all, this isn't paradise, but New York politics."
"At Tompkins's--I alluz go to him for my Oolong--I heard that Doc Crandall won't vote for you after your dead set at the place. He's one of your party, isn't he?"
"Yes. The doctor is one of us. Good fellow, too."
"And at Brady's, where I get my corn meal, I heard somebody say you've got the Irish down on you."
"Oh, I hope not," returned the candidate, cheerfully. "They're a most respectable and industrious factor in our town's life. I like the Irish."
"I s'pose."
He searched her face and concluded that her irony was unconscious; she undeceived him.
"Butter wouldn't melt in your mouth now you're runnin' for office," she said, laboring to her feet. "I'm s'prised you hevn't wings."
Shelby affected to relish the hoary jest, and escorted her gayly to the door. "I'll look for you to-morrow," he assured her.
"Don't strain your eyes," said the widow.
The Hon. Seneca Bowers passed her on the stairs. Greeting the lawyer, he seated himself behind the clerk's back, with a meaning slant of his Grant-like head.
Shelby understood. "Leave those notices of trial for the present, William," he ordered, "and get this stipulation signed. If the man isn't in his office, try the county clerk's."
Bowers pulled with clock-work precision at his cigar, while the boy uncoiled his long legs from his chair, and with furtive little pats at his necktie and fiery shock, made ready to go out. Shelby stumbled upon the waste-paper basket as the door slammed at his clerk's heels, and with vicious satisfaction he kicked it to the room's far end.
The caller's eyes twinkled.
"The Widow Weatherwax been administering spiritual balm?" he asked.
"I could wring her neck," Shelby averred.
"Her will again?"
"Of course."
"You'll have it as long as you