“And,” his landlady went on, “I didn’t trust him; and afterward I told Danny to watch him like he was a tack on a dark floor. I remember that time at dinner that the telephone was talked about—somethin’ brought it out—and our party line got a hearin’. And Mike, bein’ one of them fellers that alwus likes to pan out wimmin for bein’ mutts and havin’ no principles, says he bet I listened on the line.
“‘Well,’ I says, ‘bein’ that I’m honust by nature,’ I says, ‘I’ll say this much: If I happen to take down the receiver and the line’s busy,’ I says, ‘mebbe I don’t put the thing right back up on the hook,’ I says.
“Mike laughs.
“‘Haw-haw-haw!’ he says, ‘you’re like all the rest of ’em, Mis’ Sweeny,’ he says. ‘Wimmin would listen on a telephone line, if what they heard was that their own house was burnin’ down,’ he says. ‘They’d stick till the folks got through talkin’ and then take a chance at gettin’ out alive,’ he says.
“Well, I didn’t have no argument with him, seein’ that he’s nothin’ but a rowdy. And then the talk turns to who’s on the line with us. You know how them things will come off. You bring up somethin’ to talk about and tell all you know about it, and then begin to lie. We told Mike that a Presbyterian minister was the L party; and a clairvoyant was the X party, and a feller named Doyle, that run a corner saloon over on Amsterdam Av-noo, was the R party, and we was the J party. I knew, for I’d called up the information operator from downtown and asked. Mebbe I was buttin’ in, but I just had to know. At first I was goin’ to kick about havin’ a saloon on our line, but the phone wasn’t there; it was at the man’s house. Of course all this patter didn’t mean nothin’ much to Mike at the time. It was just somethin’ that comes off between ladies and gent’m’n. But wait! I seen the time when I wished we’d never said a word about who was on our line. All the trouble come from that.”
The Boarder was showing considerable interest.
“I don’t see how⸺” he began.
But Mrs. Sweeny had the floor, and reminded him of it.
“Sometimes,” she declared, “you don’t seem like you had sense. Ain’t I doin’ my best to tell you how?”
He subsided, and she went on: