I spoze she spoke in that way to let us know they wuz furnished sweet—­that is, I spoze so.

His mother had died there, and he couldn’t bear to know that anybody else had her rooms; so he kep ’em all, and paid high for ’em, so she said, and wuz as much to be depended on for punctuality, and honesty, as the Bank of England, or the mines of Golcondy.

Yes, Miss Plank said that, with all his sociable, pleasant ways with everybody, he wuz a millionare—­made it in sugar, I believe she said—­I know it wuz sunthin’ good to eat, and sort o’ sweet—­it might have been molasses—­I won’t be sure.

But anyway he got so awful rich by it that he could live anywhere he wuz a mind to—­in a palace, if he took it into his head to want one.

But instead of branchin’ out and makin’ a great show, he jest kep right on a-livin’ in the rooms he had took so long ago for his family.  But they had all gone and left him, his mother dead, and his two nieces gone with their father to California, where they wuz in a convent school.  And he kep right on a-livin’ in the old rooms.

Miss Plank told me in confidence, and on the hair-cloth sofa in the upper hall, that it would be a big wrench if he ever left there.

[Illustration:  Miss Plank told me in confidence that it would be a big wrench if he left.]

She said, “She didn’t say it because he wuz a bacheldor and she a widder, she said it out of pure-respect.”

And I believed it, a good deal of the time I did; for good land! she wuz old enough to be his ma, and more too.

But he acted dretful pretty to her, I could see that.  Not findin’ no fault, eatin’ hash jest as calm as if he wuzn’t engaged in a strange and mysterious business.

For great, great is the mystery of boardin’-house hash.

Not a-mindin’ the children’s noise—­indeed, a-courtin’ it, as you may say, for he would coax the youngest and most troublesome one away from its tired mother sometimes, and keep it by him at the table, and wait on it.

He thought his eyes of children, so Miss Plank said.

I might have thought that he took care of the child on its mother’s account, out of sentiment instead of pity, if Miss Schack hadn’t been as humbly as humbly could be, and a big wart on the end of her nose, and a cowlick.  She had three children, and they wuz awful, awful to git along with.

Her husband “wuz on the road,” she said.  And we couldn’t any of us really make out from what she said what he wuz a-doin’ there, whether he wuz a-movin’ along on it to his work, or jest a-settin’ there.

But anyway she talked a good deal about his “bein’ on the road,” and how much better the children behaved “before he went on it.”

They jest rid over her, and over us too, if we would let ’em.

They wuz the awfullest children I ever laid eyes on, for them that had such pious and well-meanin’ names.