My housekeeper was the boss prize in the package. Her name was Mabel Seabury, and she was young and quiet and as pretty as the first bunch of Mayflowers in the spring. And a lady--whew! The first time I set opposite to her at table I made up my mind I wouldn't drink out of my sa.s.ser if I scalded the lining off my throat.

She was city born and brought up, but she wa'n't one of your common "He!

he! ain't you turrible!" lunch-counter princesses, with a head like a dandelion gone to seed and a fish-net waist. You bet she wa'n't! Her dad had had money once, afore he tried to beat out Jonah and swallow the stock exchange whale. After that he was skipper of a little society library up to Cambridge, and she kept house for him. Then he died and left her his blessing, and some of Peter Brown's wife's folks, that knew her when she was well off, got her the job of housekeeper here with us.

The only trouble she made was first along, and that wa'n't her fault.

I thought at one time we'd have to put up a wire fence to keep them college waiters away from her. They hung around her like a pa.s.sel of gulls around a herring boat. She was nice to 'em, too, but when you're just so nice to everybody and not nice enough to any special one, the prospect ain't encouraging. So they give it up, but there wa'n't a male on the place, from old Dr. Blatt, mixer of Blatt's Burdock Bitters and Blatt's Balm for Beauty, down to the boy that emptied the ashes, who wouldn't have humped himself on all fours and crawled eight miles if she'd asked him to. And that includes me and Cap'n Jonadab, and we're about as tough a couple of women-proof old hulks as you'll find afloat.

Jonadab took a special interest in her. It pretty nigh broke his heart to think she was running my house instead of his. He thought she'd ought to be married and have a home of her own.

"Well," says I, "why don't she get married then? She could drag out and tie up any single critter of the right s.e.x in this neighborhood with both hands behind her back."

"Humph!" says he. "I s'pose you'd have her marry one of these soup-toting college chaps, wouldn't you? Then they could live on Greek for breakfast and Latin for dinner and warm over the leavings for supper. No, sir! a girl hasn't no right to get married unless she gets a man with money. There's a deck-load of millionaires comes here every summer, and I'm goin' to help her land one of 'em. It's my duty as a Christian," says he.

One evening, along the second week in July 'twas, I got up from the supper-table and walked over toward the hotel, smoking, and thinking what I'd missed in not having a girl like that set opposite me all these years. And, in the shadder of the big bunch of lilacs by the gate, I see a feller standing, a feller with a leather bag in his hand, a stranger.

"Good evening," says I. "Looking for the hotel, was you?"

He swung round, kind of lazy-like, and looked at me. Then I noticed how big he was. Seemed to me he was all of seven foot high and broad according. And rigged up--my soul! He had on a wide, felt hat, with a whirligig top onto it, and a light checked suit, and gloves, and slung more style than a barber on Sunday. If I'D wore them kind of duds they'd have had me down to Danvers, clanking chains and picking straws, but on this young chap they looked fine.

"Good evening," says the seven-footer, looking down and speaking to me cheerful. "Is this the Old Ladies' Home--the Old Home House, I should say?"

"Yes, sir," says I, looking up reverent at that hat.

"Right," he says. "Will you be good enough to tell me where I can find the proprietor?"

"Well," says I, "I'm him; that is, I'm one of him. But I'm afraid we can't accommodate you, mister, not now. We ain't got a room nowheres that ain't full."

He knocked the ashes off his cigarette. "I'm not looking for a room,"

says he, "except as a side issue. I'm looking for a job."

"A job!" I sings out. "A JOB?"

"Yes. I understand you employ college men as waiters. I'm from Harvard, and--"

"A waiter?" I says, so astonished that I could hardly swaller. "Be you a waiter?"

"_I_ don't know. I've been told so. Our coach used to say I was the best waiter on the team. At any rate I'll try the experiment."

Soon's ever I could gather myself together I reached across and took hold of his arm.

"Son," says I, "you come with me and turn in. You'll feel better in the morning. I don't know where I'll put you, unless it's the bowling alley, but I guess that's your size. You oughtn't to get this way at your age."

He laughed a big, hearty laugh, same as I like to hear. "It's straight,"

he says. "I mean it. I want a job."

"But what for? You ain't short of cash?"

"You bet!" he says. "Strapped."

"Then," says I, "you come with me to-night and to-morrer morning you go somewheres and sell them clothes you've got on. You'll make more out of that than you will pa.s.sing pie, if you pa.s.sed it for a year."

He laughed again, but he said he was bound to be a waiter and if I couldn't help him he'd have to hunt up the other portion of the proprietor. So I told him to stay where he was, and I went off and found Peter T. You'd ought to seen Peter stare when we hove in sight of the candidate.

"Thunder!" says he. "Is this Exhibit One, Barzilla? Where'd you pick up the Chinese giant?"

I done the polite, mentioning Brown's name, hesitating on t'other chap's.

"Er-Jones," says the human lighthouse. "Er-yes; Jones."

"Glad to meet you, Mr. Jones," says Peter. "So you want to be a waiter, do you? For how much per?"

"Oh, I don't know. I'll begin at the bottom, being a green hand. Twenty a week or so; whatever you're accustomed to paying."

Brown choked. "The figure's all right," he says, "only it covers a month down here."

"Right!" says Jones, not a bit shook up. "A month goes."

Peter stepped back and looked him over, beginning with the tan shoes and ending with the whirligig hat.

"Jonesy," says he, finally, "you're on. Take him to the servants'

quarters, Wingate."

A little later, when I had the chance and had Brown alone, I says to him:

"Peter," says I, "for the land sakes what did you hire the emperor for?

A blind man could see HE wa'n't no waiter. And we don't need him anyhow; no more'n a cat needs three tails. Why--"

But he was back at me before I could wink. "Need him?" he says. "Why, Barzilla, we need him more than the old Harry needs a conscience. Take a bird's-eye view of him! Size him up! He puts all the rest of the Greek statues ten miles in the shade. If I could only manage to get his picture in the papers we'd have all the romantic old maids in Boston down here inside of a week; and there's enough of THEM to keep one hotel going till judgment. Need him? Whew!"

Next morning we was at the breakfast-table in my branch establishment, me and Mabel and the five boarders. All hands was doing their best to start a famine in the fruit market, and Dr. Blatt was waving a banana and cheering us with a yarn about an old lady that his Burdock Bitters had h'isted bodily out of the tomb. He was at the most exciting part, the bitters and the undertaker coming down the last lap neck and neck, and an even bet who'd win the patient, when the kitchen door opens and in marches the waiter with the tray full of dishes of "cereal." Seems to me 'twas chopped hay we had that morning--either that or shavings; I always get them breakfast foods mixed up.

But 'twa'n't the hay that made everybody set up and take notice. 'Twas the waiter himself. Our regular steward was a spindling little critter with curls and eye-gla.s.ses who answered to the hail of "Percy." This fellow clogged up the scenery like a pet elephant, and was down in the shipping list as "Jones."

The doc left his invalid hanging on the edge of the grave, and stopped and stared. Old Mrs. Bounderby h'isted the gold-mounted double spygla.s.s she had slung round her neck and took an observation. Her daughter "Maizie" fetched a long breath and shut her eyes, like she'd seen her finish and was resigned to it.

"Well, Mr. Jones," says I, soon's I could get my breath, "this is kind of unexpected, ain't it? Thought you was booked for the main deck."

"Yes, sir," he says, polite as a sewing-machine agent, "I was, but Percy and I have exchanged. Cereal this morning, madam?"

Mrs. Bounderby took her measure of shavings and Jones's measure at the same time. She had him labeled "Danger" right off; you could tell that by the way she spread her wings over "Maizie." But I wa'n't watching her just then. I was looking at Mabel Seabury--looking and wondering.

The housekeeper was white as the tablecloth. She stared at the Jones man as if she couldn't believe her eyes, and her breath come short and quick. I thought sure she was going to cry. And what she ate of that meal wouldn't have made a lunch for a hearty humming-bird.

When 'twas finished I went out on the porch to think things over. The dining room winder was open and Jonesy was clearing the table. All of a sudden I heard him say, low and earnest:

"Well, aren't you going to speak to me?"

The answer was in a girl's voice, and I knew the voice. It said: