The Chinaman laughed and replied in good English that the young master had better try his hand at breadmaking; perhaps he could do better.
The tenants had been in the Hathaway house for four or five days. They seemed to be enjoying the peace and quiet of the establishment. The blind gentleman and his son were together constantly and never ran out of conversation. Sometimes they called Wink Lee to the library and would hold long and rather intimate talks with him. The books interested the son more than anything in the house, but he did not read much, only looked them over, taking down volume after volume and running through the pages slowly and laboriously.
Four days and four nights had the new neighbors been in the house and never a peep had Aunt Hannah Conant had at them except the one glimpse she had been treated to of the heathen Chinese’s evil countenance through the crack in the front door. The shades all over the house were kept down and, on the side next to the Conants’, the blinds remained closed.
“Anybody would think the whole bunch of them were blind and not just the old gentleman,” Aunt Hannah declared testily. “If there is anything I hate it is unneighborly neighbors.”
“What difference does it make?” Mr. Peter Conant would ask. “It is better to have neighbors who mind their own business than ones who run in your back door, for instance.”
“I’d like to see that pig-tail coming in my back door. I’d put him where he belongs. ‘Not hungly!’ when I took a pan of my very best light rolls to the ungrateful turnupnosed peacocks.”
On the fifth night of their occupancy at about midnight the tenants were aroused by the sound of a voice in the back yard calling softly, “Aunt Sally! Uncle Eben! Please let me in!”
Gravel was thrown against the back upstairs window.
There was no response to this pleading and then the call was louder and more persistent, “Aunt Sally! Uncle Eben! Wake up!”
Then the doorbell was rung, at first gently, and then with more force.