Saul stood for a moment without words in his astonishment.  He had always regarded Bott as “a professional character,” even as a “litrary man”; he had never hoped for so lofty an alliance.  And yet he could not say that he wholly liked it.  This was a strange creature—­highly gifted, doubtless, but hardly comfortable.  He was too “thick” with ghosts.  One scarcely knew whether he spent most of his time “on earth or in hell,” as Saul crudely phrased it.  The faint smell of phosphorus that he carried about with him, which was only due to his imperfect ablutions after his seances, impressed Saul’s imagination as going to show that Bott was a little too intimate with the under-ground powers.  He stood chewing a shaving and weighing the matter in his mind a moment before he answered.  He thought to himself, “After all, he is making a living.  I have seen as much as five dollars at one of his seeunses.”  But the only reply he was able to make to Bott’s point-blank question was: 

“Well, I dunno.”

The words were hardly encouraging, but the tone was weakly compliant.  Bott felt that his cause was gained, and thought he might chaffer a little.

“Of course,” he said, “I would like to have a few things understood, to start with.  I am very particular in business matters.”

“That’s right,” said Saul, who began to think that this was a very systematic and methodical man.

“I am able to support a wife, or I would not ask for one,” said Bott.

“Exactly,” said Saul, with effusion; “that’s just what I was saying to myself.”

“Oh, you was!” said Bott, scowling and hesitating.  “You was, was you?” Then, after a moment’s pause, in which he eyed Saul attentively, he continued, “Well—­that’s so.  At the same time, I am a business man, and I want to know what you can do for your girl.”

“Not much of anything, Mr. Bott, if you must know.  Mattie is makin’ her own living.”

“Yes.  That’s all right.  Does she pay you for her board?”

“Look here, Mr. Bott, that ain’t none of your business yet, anyhow.  She don’t pay no board while she stays here; but that ain’t nobody’s business.”

“Oh, no offence, sir, none in the world.  Only I am a business man, and don’t want misunderstandings.  So she don’t.  And I suppose you don’t want to part with your last child—­now, do you?  It’s like breaking your heart-strings, now, ain’t it?” he said, in his most sentimental lecture voice.

“Well, no, I can’t say it is.  Mattie’s welcome in my house while I live, but of course she’ll leave me some day, and I’ll wish her joy.”

“Why should that be?  My dear sir, why should that be?” Bott’s voice grew greasy with sweetness and persuasion.  “Why not all live together?  I will be to you as a son.  Maud will soothe your declining years.  Let it be as it is, Father Saul.”

The old carpenter looked up with a keen twinkle of his eye.

“You and your wife would like to board with us when you are married?  Well, mebbe we can arrange that.”