"How does he like it, anyhow?" asked Aunt Hetty, bending the upper part
of her out of the window to shake something. "And what kind of a critter
is he?"
"Well, he's rather an old man," said Elly. She added conscientiously,
trying to be chatty, "Paul's crazy about him. He goes over there all the
time to visit. I like him all right. The old man seems to like it here
all right. They both of them do."
"Both?" said Aunt Hetty, curving herself back into the room again.
"Oh, the other one isn't going to live here, like Mr. Welles. He's
just come to get Mr. Welles settled, and to make him a visit. His name
is Mr. Marsh."
"Well, what's he like?" asked Aunt Hetty, folding together the old
wadded petticoat she had been shaking.
"Oh, he's all right too," said Elly. She wasn't going to say anything
about that funny softness of his hands, she didn't like, because that
would be like speaking about the snow-drift; something Aunt Hetty would
just laugh at, and call one of her notions.
"Well, what do they do with themselves, two great hulking men set off
by themselves?"
Elly tried seriously to remember what they did do. "I don't see them, of
course, much in the morning before I go to school. I guess they get up
and have their breakfast, the way anybody does."
Aunt Hetty snorted a little, "Gracious, child, a person needs a
corkscrew to get anything out of you. I mean all day, with no chores, or
farmin', or anything."
"I don't know," Elly confessed. "Mr. Clark, of course, he's busy
cooking and washing dishes and keeping house, but . . ."
"Are there three of them?" Aunt Hetty stopped her dudsing in her
astonishment. "I thought you said two."
"Oh well, Mr. Marsh sent down to the city and had this Mr. Clark come up
to work for them. He doesn't call him 'Mr. Clark'--just 'Clark,' short
like that. I guess he's Mr. Marsh's hired man in the city. Only he can
do everything in the house, too. But I don't feel like calling him
'Clark' because he's grown-up, and so I call him 'Mr. Clark.'" She did
not tell Aunt Hetty that she sort of wanted to make up to him for being
somebody's servant and being called like one. It made her mad and she
wanted to show he could be a mister as well as anybody. She began on the
third cookie. What else could she say to Aunt Hetty, who always wanted
to know the news so? She brought out, "Well, I tell you, in the
afternoon, when I get home, mostly old Mr. Welles is out in his garden."