“That’s all very well to say, but he is smart enough to go down town every day and sell stocks and bonds. He ought to be smart enough to know he can’t keep his friends if he is going to abuse them as he abused me. I didn’t even know what he was talking about.”
“Neither did he, goose!” insisted Aunt Hannah, but Uncle Peter still refused to allow James Hathaway to revile him without making a protest.
“You thought and freely said that Danny Dexter was too quick to get angry with the Colonel,” Aunt Hannah continued. “You said he should have sense enough to see that the old gentleman was not quite himself, and now here you are raising Cain about a slight rudeness on his part.”
“Rudeness indeed! He said he could attend to his affairs without interference from me. I call that more than a slight rudeness. I’ll see myself offering my services to him again. He is presuming on his age to behave as he is doing.”
“Well! Well! You are behaving as though you were no age at all—not even six years old,” declared Aunt Hannah, removing her ear trumpet and laughing at her husband. When Aunt Hannah considered an argument had gone far enough she simply removed her trumpet from her ear and that ended the matter as far as she was concerned.
In spite of Mr. Peter Conant’s stern remarks about never offering his services to Jim Hathaway again, that very night he was not only offering them but they were being accepted and that most gratefully, if not by the Colonel, at least by Mary Louise.
The old gentleman had come home from his daily visit to the broker’s offices and had seemed a little steadier on his legs than of late, a little more cheerful and less inclined to hunt for trouble than had been the case for the last few months. He sat down in his big chair and Mary Louise took her accustomed place on the stool at his feet. She had brought home from the Higgledy Piggledy a little crêpe bonnet which she had been unable to finish that afternoon and, since it was promised for the following day, she determined to work on it a while at home. There were only a few stitches to be put in and a bit of ruching to be tacked across the front.
The old man and the young girl sat thus for a long time. Mary Louise was busily plying her needle and the Colonel dozed and waked and dozed again.
“Is that a bonnet for yourself, my dear?” he asked, breaking the silence.
“Oh no, Grandpa Jim! This is a widow’s bonnet.”