“And now here, lately, a neighbor got a half-breed game rooster, an’ thet pesky fightin’ bird got down here an’ sasses Agamemnon on his own premises.
“Ag wouldn’t stand for that,” said the old lady, her blue eyes fairly crackling. “He sailed right inter that game chicken—an’ Neighbor Lincoln et his rooster the nex’ Sunday for dinner. ’Twas all he could do with the critter after Agamemnon got through with him.
“But that game rooster had tore ev’ry important feather off’n poor Agamemnon’s carcass. I had to do suthin’. ’Twarn’t decent for him to go ’round bare. So I made him that smock out of one o’ poor Eddie’s old shirts. And there ye be!” she finished breathlessly, smiling broadly upon the interested Corner House girls.
“I guess you are Mrs. Bobster?” asked Ruth, smiling in return.
“Are you really the—the lady who lives in the shoe?” asked Dot, round-eyed.
“That’s what they call me, pet,” said Mrs. Bobster, smiling at the smallest Kenway. “I’m the only little old woman who lives in this shoe. Poor Eddie thought we’d make a mint of money if we built over the top of our house like that, and I sold gingercakes and sweeties to the children who came down here to the beach. Eddie was allus mighty smart in thinkin’ up schemes for me to make money. But the Beach Company went up in smoke, as the sayin’ is; so we didn’t make our fortun’ after all.”
She laughed. Indeed, this little, apple-faced old lady was almost always laughing, it seemed.
“Poor Eddie!” she added. “I guess the Beach Company failin’ took about all the tuck out o’ him. He said himself it was the last straw on the camel’s back. He jest settled right down inter his chair, like; and he didn’t last that winter out. He was allus weakly, Eddie was.”
The Corner House girls knew she must be speaking of her husband. So now she was all alone in the house that had such a grotesque upper story.
“No. There ain’t no children here—only them that comes in to see me,” Mrs. Bobster said in answer to a question from Tess. “We never did have no children; but we allus loved ’em.”