Where Theres a Will | Page 8

trunks full
of clothes I've never worn, and to have to put on poky old black,
without keeping me here in this old ladies' home?"
Mr. Sam looked at the cards and then at her.
"I'm not going to pick them up," he declared. "And as to our staying
here, don't you realize that if we don't your precious brother will never
show up here at all, or stay if he does come? And don't you also realize
that this is probably the only chance he'll ever have in the world to
become financially independent of us?"
"You needn't be brutal," she said sharply. "And it isn't so bad for you
here as it is for me. You spend every waking minute admiring Miss
Jennings, while I--there isn't a man in the place who'll talk anything but
his joints or his stomach."
She got up and went to the window, and Mr. Sam followed her.
Nobody pays any attention to me in the spring-house; I'm a part of it,
like the brass rail around the spring, or the clock.
"I'm not admiring Miss Jennings," he corrected, "I'm sympathizing,
dear. She looks too nice a girl to have been stung by the title bee, that's
all."
She turned her back to him, but he pretended to tuck the hair at the
back of her neck up under her comb, and she let him do it. As I stooped
to gather up the cards he kissed the tip of her ear.
"Listen," he said, "there's a scream of a play down at Finleyville
to-night called Sweet Peas. Senator Biggs and the bishop went down
last night, and they say it's the worst in twenty years. Put on a black
veil and let's slip away and see it."
I think she agreed to do it, but that night after dinner, Amanda King,
who has charge of the news stand, told me the sheriff had closed the
opera-house and that the leading woman was sick at the hotel.

"They say she looked funny last night," Amanda finished, "and I guess
she's got the mumps."
Mumps!
My joint gave a throb at that minute.

CHAPTER IV
AND A WAY
Mr. Sam wasn't taking any chances, for the next day he went to the city
himself to bring Mr. Dick up. Everything was quiet that day and the
day after, except that on the second day I had a difference of opinion
with the house doctor and he left.
The story of the will had got out, of course, and the guests were waiting
to see Mr. Dick come and take charge. I got a good bit of gossip from
Miss Cobb, who had had her hair cut short after a fever and used to
come out early in the morning and curl it all over her head, heating the
curler on the fire log. I never smell burnt hair that I don't think of Miss
Cobb trying to do the back of her neck. She was one of our regulars,
and every winter for ten years she'd read me the letters she had got
from an insurance agent who'd run away with a married woman the day
before the wedding. She kept them in a bundle, tied with lavender
ribbon.
It was on the third day, I think, that Miss Cobb told me that Miss Patty
and her father had had a quarrel the day before. She got it from one of
the chambermaids. Mr. Jennings was a liver case and not pleasant at
any time, but he had been worse than usual. Annie, the chambermaid,
told Miss Cobb that the trouble was about settlements, and that the
more Miss Patty tried to tell him it was the European custom the worse
he got. Miss Patty hadn't come down to breakfast that day, and Mr.
Moody and Senator Biggs made a wager in the Turkish bath--according
to Miss Cobb--Mr. Moody betting the wedding wouldn't come off at

all.
"Of course," Miss Cobb said, wetting her finger and trying the iron to
see if it was hot, "of course, Minnie, they're not married yet, and if
Father Jennings gets ugly and makes any sort of scandal it's all off. A
scandal just now would be fatal. These royalties are very touchy about
other people's reputations."
Well, I heard that often enough in the next few days.
Mr. Sam hadn't come back by the morning of the sixth day, but he
wired his wife the day before that Mr. Dick was on the way. But we
met every train with a sleigh, and he didn't come. I was uneasy,
knowing Mr. Dick, and Mrs. Sam was worried, too.
By that time everybody was waiting and watching, and on the early
train on the sixth day came the lawyer,