“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.
“I did. You didn't think I lied, did you? Always ready to snatch up a person's words before they git 'em out of their mouth! The third one is a boy, Bertie they call him, sick and spin'ly, but a right nice little fellow. Where'd Chick go?”
“He's settin' out there on the door-step. Did you hear 'bout our shootin'?”
“Maria was tryin' to tell me, but she didn't seem to have nothin' clear to tell. Who do you think done it?”
Phineas Flathers, balancing himself on the hind legs of his chair, with his thumbs in the armholes of his vest, was nothing loath to launch forth into a full recital of the affair, embellishing it with many a flourish as he went along. In the bosom of his family he was freed from those bonds of restraint that embarrassed his utterance when in more formal society. The amount of profanity that he could dispose of in the course of an ordinary conversation was little short of astounding. This being more than an ordinary conversation and his mood being mellow, called for an extra vocabulary. He graphically set forth the facts in the case, then gave his imagination full sway in accounting for them. He interpreted the whole affair as a clash between capital and labor, a conflict between the pampered aristocrat and the common man. The shooting was the result of a deep-laid plan: Dillingham and Morley had met by appointment, moved by what motive he did not make clear, to kill Sheeley, an honest laboring man. Hadn't the one on horseback, that they say was Mr. Morley, stopped him at the crossing, on the very afternoon of the shooting, and engaged him in conversation? Phineas assured his listeners that he trembled even now when he thought of the danger he had been in!
“I'd seed him afore that day a ridin' with a pretty young lady, that most got her neck broke under a engine, but this time he was by hisself, a settin' there on his horse, as proud as a king and stirrin' me up about the rich folks not allowing us poor working classes to have no streets out here. I suspicioned somethin' right then; says I to myself, 'he's got a handsome face but his mind is a well of corruption.' And when I heard he'd shot Sheeley ...Now what in thunder is the matter with you, Chick?”
During this recital Chick had been sitting in the doorway, his knees drawn up to his chin, listening intently, but at this point he cried out in a sputter of protesting sounds.