“How you goin' to order that Grand Panjandrum around?” he says. “Great land of Goshen! I'd as soon think of telling the Pope of Rome to empty a pail of swill as I would him. Why don't he stay to home and be a tailor's sign or something? Not prance around here with his high-toned airs. I'm glad you've got him, Barzilla, and not me.”
Well, most of that was plain jealousy, so I didn't contradict. Besides I was too busy thinking. By eight o'clock I'd made up my mind and I went hunting for Jones.
I found him, after a while, standing by the back door and staring up at the chamber winders as if he missed something. I asked him to come along with me. Told him I had a big cargo of talk aboard, and wouldn't be able to cruise on an even keel till I'd unloaded some of it. So he fell into my wake, looking puzzled, and in a jiffy we was planted in the rocking chairs up in my bedroom.
“Look here,” says I, “Mr.—Mr.—”
“Jones,” says he.
“Oh, yes—Jones. It's a nice name.”
“I remember it beautifully,” says he, smiling.
“All right, Mr. Jones. Now, to begin with, we'll agree that it ain't none of my darn business, and I'm an old gray-headed nosey, and the like of that. But, being that I AM old—old enough to be your dad, though that's my only recommend for the job—I'm going to preach a little sermon. My text is found in the Old Home Hotel, Wellmouth, first house on the left. It's Miss Seabury,” says I.
He was surprised, I guess, but he never turned a hair. “Indeed?” he says. “She is the—the housekeeper, isn't she?”
“She was,” says I, “but she leaves to-morrer morning.”