"I didn't say nothing about neglect, marm—there wasn't much of that, any how, for the poor lady never had a minute to herself. That ere cream-colored gal was always a-hanging over her like a pison vine, and the more she tended her, the sicker she grew—anybody with an eye to the windward, could see that without a glass."
"Benson, you surprise—you pain me!" cried Mabel, with sudden energy. "Great Heavens, what could have put this wild idea into your head?"
"It was in my head years ago, and went to sleep there," answered Ben impressively—"but the sight of just sich a face, and just sich a cretur, all but the color, prowling about this ere very house—in and out like a mouser—has woke up the idee agin, and my own mother couldn't sing it to sleep, if she rose from the dead with the old lol-lo-by on her lips. I wish something could drive it away, for it's all the time a sighing in my ear, like the sound of waves when they close over a corpse."
"It is a terrible thought," said Mabel, shuddering.
"Now, don't go to turning pale nor nothing," said Ben, with prompt anxiety, "don't take it to heart, no how—just as like as not, it's one of old Ben Benson's sea-sarpents, that'll float off the minute it's touched, and if it does amount to any thing, ain't that individual here with his face to the wind, and his hand on the helm? Only do be careful what you eat and drink here alone, if that ere gov'rness is turning waiter for you or the general. There's a reason for it—be sartain of that."
"How foolish all this is," said Mabel, striving to laugh.
"One would think, Benson, that we lived in Italy, when the Borgias made poison an amusement, instead of being quiet people in the quietest land on earth!"
"The quietest country on earth," answered Ben, reflecting over her words with a hand buried amid the jack-knives, bits of twine, and lumps of lead, in his deepest of deep pockets. "That ere sentiment used to sound beautiful on a Fourth of July, when I was a shaver, but it's took after my example, and out-grown itself a long shot. Why, marm, there ain't ere a day but what some poor woman goes through a post mitimus, and two or three men are found with their skulls driv in by sling shot down in the city, to say nothing of them that never git under the crouner's hands, but are put away with a doctor's pass, into the grave that somebody should be hanged for filling. I can't go out a-fishing on the Hudson now, marm, without a feeling that some gang of rowdies may set upon me and steal my boat. I can't go into the city with a sartinty that a bowie knife won't be buried in my side, before I get home. In short, marm, I don't believe in calling countries quiet where murders and amusements go hand in hand. America was a peaceable country once, but it ain't that thing no longer. Them ere Borgers, as I've hearn, did their murders softly and arter dark, and it won't be long afore we learn to do the thing genteelly, as they did. I tell you, marm, I don't like strangers a-running about this house while you and Miss Lina live in it. Ain't the old sarvants enough—What have they done to be turned out of doors?"
"Who has been turned out of doors, Benson? No one by me," said Mabel, a good deal surprised by this harangue.
"No, marm—but they're dropping out of their places softly marm, as the leaves fall out yonder, without the least idee what wind strikes 'em. Yesterday, the old cook, as has been in your kitchen twenty years, got her discharge. To-morrow, for anything that old feller knows, Ben Benson may git his mitimus, and when he asks to see the lady as he's sarved heart and soul since he was a boy a'most, they'll tell him as they did the cook—that this ere lady is sick, and can't be troubled with such matters."