Aunt Selina got up the next morning and Jim told her all the strange
things that had been happening. She fixed on Flannigan, of course,
although she still suspected Betty of her watch and other valuables. The
incident of the comfort she called nervous indigestion and bad hours.
She spent the entire day going through the storeroom and linen closets,
and running her fingers over things for dust. Whenever she found any
she looked at me, drew a long breath, and said, "Poor James!" It was
maddening. And when she went through his clothes and found some buttons
off (Jim didn't keep a man, and Takahiro had stopped at his boots) she
looked at me quite awfully.
"His mother was a perfect housekeeper," she said. "James was brought up
in clothes with the buttons on, put on clean shelves."
"Didn't they put them on him?" I asked, almost hysterically. It had been
a bad morning, after a worse night. Every one had found fault with the
breakfast, and they straggled down one at a time until I was frantic.
Then Flannigan had talked to me about the pearls, and Mr. Harbison had
said, "Good morning," very stiffly, and nearly rattled the inside of the
furnace out.
Early in the morning, too, I overheard a scrap of conversation between
the policeman and our gentleman adventurer from South America. Something
had gone wrong with the telephone and Mr. Harbison was fussing over it
with a screw driver and a pair of scissors--all the tools he could find.
Flannigan was lifting rugs to shake them on the roof--Bella's order.
"Wash the table linen!" he was grumbling. "I'll do what I can that's
necessary. Grub has to be cooked, and dishes has to be washed--I'll
admit that. If you're particular, make up your bed every day; I don't
object. But don't tell me we have to use thirty-three table napkins
a day. What did folks do before napkins was invented? Tell me
that!"--triumphantly.
"What's the answer?" Mr. Harbison inquired absently, evidently with the
screw driver in his mouth.
"Used their pocket handkerchiefs! And if the worst comes to the
worst, Mr. Harbison, these folks here can use their sleeves, for all
I care--not that the women has any sleeves to speak of. Wash clothes I
will not."
"Well, don't worry Mrs. Wilson about it," the other voice said.
Flannigan straightened himself with a grunt.
"Mrs. Wilson!" he said. "A lot she would worry. She's been a
disappointment to me, Mr. Harbison, me thinking that now she'd come back
to him, after leavin' him the way she did, they'd be like two turtle
doves. Lord! The cook next door--"
But what the cook had told about Bella and Jimmy was not divulged,
for the Harbison man caught him up with a jerk and sent Flannigan,
grumbling, with his rugs to the roof.