XIII
EDITOR WOODSIT A TRUE FRIEND
One morning—it was a Thursday morning, as I distinctly recall—I was much surprised to find that work upon the house had practically been suspended. I was sure there could not have been a strike, for I told the workmen at the beginning that whenever they felt as if they were not getting enough pay they must come to me about it and I would raise their wages. They had already been to me three times and received an increase of pay each time. So I felt moderately secure against a strike. Uncle Si explained the situation briefly.
"The plasterers were to have begun today," said he, "but there is no water for them; so I had to send them away."
"No water?" I cried. "No water? Then tell me, I pray, why this noble front yard of ours has been converted into a dreary waste by those vandals with their spades and picks? Why is that deep, wide, ragged ditch still yawning in our faces and threatening the death of every tree at whose roots it crawls? And why did I pay Sibley the plumber forty-five dollars last Saturday night, if it were not for the laying of water pipe in that hideous ditch? No water, indeed!"
"It is nobody's fault but the city's," explained Uncle Si. "The pipe is all laid and nothing remains but for the city to make the connection with the main in the street. You see we can't tap the main; that is for the city to do."
"Then why does n't the city do it?" I asked.
Uncle Si shrugged his shoulders.
"The city ought to do a good many things it does n't do," said he. "They promised to have that main tapped at eight o'clock last Monday morning, and here it is ten o'clock Thursday morning and not a drop of water on the place! There is n't any use kicking, for those politicians down at the City Hall do things their own way and take their own time doing 'em!"
I saw that argument with Uncle Si meant simply a waste of time, so I determined to go down-town to the City Hall myself to see whether no eloquence or indignation of my own would move the derelict officers to a performance of their duty. On the train I fell in with Mr. Leet, who was on his way to his place of business. He had not seen me since our purchase of the Schmittheimer property, and he took this first occasion to congratulate me upon what he called one of those bargains which occur at rare intervals in a century. Finding me in a felicitous mood, Mr. Leet went on to say that the property we already possessed would be enhanced in value an hundred-fold and would be rendered marketable instantaneously by the further acquisition of the twenty-five feet adjoining it upon the north.