“Drive on, Sam,” said Oliver, sinking back in the seat.
Presently Mr. Baxter cackled. He was in high good humor again. “Say,” he said, “I fooled the whole crowd of ’em. I told Joe and the rest of ’em you wouldn’t be coming down till to-morrow. Pretty smart trick, eh? Joe’ll be so mad he’ll pay me the twenty dollars he owes me, claiming he don’t want to have anything more to do with me. He-he-he!”
Oliver was silent. Sammy snorted and then got very red in the face.
“I had to tell Serepty Grimes,” went on Mr. Baxter, as if apologizing to himself. “She’s keeping house for me now, and so I had to tell her. I didn’t tell her till just about an hour ago, though. She was as mad as a wet hen.”
“Aunt Serepta keeping house for you?”
“Yes. Have you got any objections?”
“None whatever, dad. I think it’s great.”
“Well,” began the old man, slightly mollified, “I’m glad it suits you.”
“I wouldn’t have thought she’d give up her own nice little house to—Don’t tell she’s in financial difficulties, dad.”
“She’s better off than she ever was. She sold her house and lot and the Grimes sawmill two years ago, and now she’s living off the fat of the land. She was the one who proposed the housekeeper scheme, not me. I tried to argue her out of it. Wasn’t any use. I said that people would be sure to talk if she came over and lived at my house. Make a regular scandal out of it. But she just laughed and said nothing in the world would tickle her so much as to have people say complimentary things about her at her age. I was a long time figuring out what she meant. She’s sixty-nine. She says I ought to feel the same way about it, me being seventy-four. ‘Let ’em talk,’ says she, and after a while she got me to saying ‘let ’em talk.’ But the cussed part of it is, nobody thinks there’s anything scandalous about it. There hasn’t been a derned bit of talk. The only thing people say, far as I can make out, is that it’s a mighty nice arrangement. What the dickens are you laughing at, Sam?”