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Page 12
They liked each other well and in a little time he had absorbed the
simple tale of her activities. When you rented rooms, people sometimes
left without paying you. So had gone Professor de Lavigne, the
chiropodist; so had vanished the original Madam Wanda. They had left
their signs, and nothing else. The rest was simple after you had been
seeing how they did it--a little practice with a nail-file, a little
observation of parties that came in with cr�pe on, to whom you said,
"Standing right there I see some one near and dear to you that has
lately passed on to the spirit land"; or male parties that looked all
fussed up and worried, to whom you said that the deal was coming out all
right, only they were always to act on their first impulse and look out
for a man with kind of brownish hair who carried a gold watch and
sometimes wore gloves. She said it was strange how she could "hit it"
sometimes, especially where there were initials in the hats they left
outside in the hall, or a name inside the overcoat pocket. It was
wonderful what she had been able to tell parties for a dollar.
Bean cared little for these details, but he was excited by the theory
back of them; a world from which the unseen spirits of the dead will
counsel and guide us in our daily affairs if we will listen. It was a
new terror added to a world of terrors--they were all about you,
striving with futile hands to touch you, whispering words of cheer or
warning to your deaf ears.
Mrs. Jackson herself believed it implicitly and went each week to
consult one or another of the more advanced mediums. The last one had
seen the spirit of her Aunt Mary, a deceased person so remote in time
that she had been clean forgotten. But it was a valuable pointer. When
you come to think about it, at least seven parties out of ten, if they
were any way along in years, had a dead Aunt Mary. And it was best to go
to the good ones. Mrs. Jackson admitted that. You paid more, but you got
more.
Uncle Bunker became of this opinion very soon. What Mrs. Jackson
disclosed to him about May wheat had seemed to be hardly worth the
dollar she asked. He began going to the good ones, and Bean gathered
that even their superior gifts left something to be desired. The
brilliant uncle began to accustom his home circle to frowns. Bean and
the older Clara (she was beginning to complain about not sleeping and a
pain in her side) were sensible of this change, but the younger Clara
only pouted when she noticed it at all, prettily accusing her splendid
consort of not caring for her as he had once professed to. She spent
more time over her hair and shopped extensively for feminine trappings.
Then one day his uncle came home, a slinking wreck of beauty, and told
Aunt Clara that all was lost save honour. Bean heard the interesting
announcement, and gathered, after a question from his aunt, that his own
patrimony had been a part of that all which was lost save honour. He
heard his uncle add tearfully that one shot would end it now.
He was frightened by this, but his Aunt Clara seemed not to be. He heard
her say, "There, there! Did a nassy ol' martet do adainst 'ums!" And
later she was seen to take him up tea and toast and chicken.
* * * * *
The years seemed to march more swiftly then--school and growing and
little changes in the house. Boo'ful never fired the shot that would
have ended all. The older Clara inconsequently died and the frivolous
Clara took her place in the kitchen. She had not corrected her light
manner, but slowly she changed with the years until she was almost as
faded as the old Clara had been. More ambitious, however, and working to
better purpose. They went to a new and finer house that would hold more
boarders; and the sign, which was lettered in gold, said, "Boarders
Taken," a far more dignified sign than the old with its frank appeal of
"Boarders Wanted." That new sign intimated a noble condescension.
Aunt Clara had not only settled down to be a worker, but she had proved
to be a manager. Boo'ful actually performed little services about the
house, staying in the kitchen at meal-time to carve and help serve the
food. Aunt Clara had been unexpected adamant in the matter of his taking
a fine revenge on the market that had gone against him. She refused to
provide the very modest sum he pleaded for to this end, and as the two
old Uncle Bunkers were equally obdurate--they said they had known when
he married that flutter-budget just how he would end--his leisure was
never seriously menaced.
Aunt Clara was especially firm about the money because of the
considerable life-insurance premium she soon began to pay. It was her
whim that little Bean had not been of competent years to lose all save
honour, and she had discovered a life-insurance company whose officers
were mad enough to compute Boo'ful's loss to the world in dollars and
cents. He was, in fact, considered an excellent risk. He did not fade
after the manner of the busy Aunt Clara, that gay little wretch whose
girlish graces lingered on incongruously--like jests upon a tombstone.
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