A Romance of Billy-Goat Hill

								

in rag-time.
Phineas Flathers, after months of abstinence, had reached that period
where he felt that not only his constitution, but his profession would
profit by a temporary fall from grace. Solicitude for his moral welfare
was beginning to flag at the Church; his regular attendance, his
apparent absorption in the sermon, and his emotional execution of the
hymns, all went to lift him from the class of interesting converts, to
the deadly commonplace of regular members. Only that afternoon he had
decided to revive interest in his case at any cost. He had just treated
others, as he would have others treat him at the Cant-Pass-It, when he
was summoned home to see his sister.
He now presented himself in his own doorway, a hand on either side of
the jamb, and bowed profoundly:
“Miss Flathers! Pleased to meet you! I see you still continue to favor
yourself in looks. Lost your place, I suppose?”
“That's right, be insultin'!” Myrtella flared up haughtily; “throw it
in my face that I'm hard to please, and ain't willin' to put up with any
old place I come to.”
“Now I wouldn't put it that I was throwing it in yer face exactly,”
began Phineas, anxious to propitiate.
“Which means I'm a story-teller?” Myrtella squared herself for action.
“Oh, come on along,” coaxed Phineas; “no harm's meant. Go on an' tell us
what you left fer.”
“Who said I'd left? Puttin' words in my mouth I never thought of
utterin'! I ain't left, and what's more I ain't going to. I got a good
place.”
Phineas whistled an aggravatingly attenuated note of surprise: “The lady
you are working for must be a deef-mute.”
“She is. The same as you'll be some day. She's been dead three years.”
The triumph with which she made this announcement put a momentary
quietus on Phineas, and enabled her to proceed:
“It's a widower gentleman with three children that I'm cookin' for, and
I ain't set eyes on one of 'em except at meal times since I hired to
'em. Queerington's their names, out on College Street, right around the
corner from the Immanuel Church. He's a teacher or something, one of
them bookwormy men, whose head never pays no attention to what the
rest of him is doing. 'Take charge,' said he, 'of everything, do the
ordering, and cooking, and don't bother me with nothing.'”
“But does he bother you?” put in Phineas astutely; “that's the real
point.”
“Wasn't I just tellin' you that he didn't? He's been off on a trip to
Virginia; gets home to-night. I've got the whole house in the pa'm of my
hand, from cellar to attic. Miss Connie, she's the oldest, as flighty as
a pidgeon and head so full of boys she don't pay no attention to another
livin' thing. Then there's Miss Hattie, the second one, jes' at that
spiteful thirteen age, but so busy peckin' on her sister, she ain't no
time left for me--”
“Thought you said there was three children,” put in Maria mildly.