“This stove is not drawin’ any too good, an’ what with these pipes an’ the parlor pipes not actin’ christian-like my eyes run warter orl day long. Ebenezer Wopp, I sees a job ahead fer you. My patience is wore out an’ this very day you’ll git at the pipes and git the soot cleaned out.”
“I reckon it is the biggest half of some time sence those there jints was took apart,” agreed Ebenezer, with unerring diplomacy, searching through several slips of paper as though to find memoranda thereon, “I reckon I’d better git to work this very minute.”
“Moses!” called husband and wife, simultaneously. Mrs. Wopp’s voice spanned an interval of about a dozen semi-tones, and as it always grew in volume in direct ratio to the emergency of the duty to be imposed, the last syllable of her son’s name fell on that wretched boy’s ear like a clap of thunder. Mr. Wopp’s accents remained on nearly all occasions at the same even degree of meekness. Nature had not given him the temperament to indulge in crescendos or double fortes.
Moses was whistling a dismal discordant air in the backyard when the voice of his mother smote his ears.
“Yeh, Mar.”
“What yer whistlin’ so mournful like?” queried his mother, “makes me think of funerals an’ sich like; jist come in an’ help yer par with the stove-pipes, mebbe that’ll cheer you up.”
Moses’ face became as mournful as his music had been. It was as though he had suddenly realized that life was, after all, more serious than one suspects in one’s idle moments.
The first act of the unwilling recruit was to bring into the house a coal-scuttle and large shovel, clanking them ominously as he walked.
“Stop that there ‘Dead March of Saul,’ an’ go put on yer overalls,” ordered Mrs. Wopp, “what’s the idear of the gardenin’ tool, go git the littlest shovel to put inter the chimbly, an’ don’t let the grass grow under yer feet, neither.”
By this time Mr. Wopp was bearing a length of pipe into the yard. The parlor looked like a morgue with its inanimate objects lying bidden under sheets and cloths of varying degrees of past usefulness. Through a hole of one sheet could be seen the listless towzled head of Hannah, her faded wax countenance betraying the need of a tonic.