“Well, if I do, then nobody else does, and if THEY do, I don't. I've heard of more dead relations this forenoon than I ever had alive. And yarns about 'em! and about you and me! My soul and body! Say, did you know you had a cousin-in-law in Californy?”
“I? In California? Nonsense!”
“No nonsense about it. You had one and he was a lunatic or a epileptic or an epizootic or somethin', and lived in a hospital or a palace or a jail, and he was worth four millions or forty, I forget which, and fell out of an automobile or out of a balloon or out of bed—anyhow, it killed him—and—”
“Daniel Dott! DON'T talk so idiotic!”
“Humph! that's nothin' to the idiocy that's been talked to me this forenoon. I've done nothin' for the last hour but say 'No' to folks that come tearin' in to unload lies and ask questions. And some of 'em was people you'd expect to have common sense, too. My head's kind of wobbly this mornin', after the shock that hit it last night, but it's a regular Dan'l Webster's alongside the general run of heads in this town. Aunt Laviny's will has turned Trumet into an asylum, and the patients are all runnin' loose.”
“But WHAT foolishness was that about a cousin in California?”
“'Twa'n't foolishness, I tell you. You ask any one of a dozen folks you meet outside the post-office now, and they'll all tell you you had one. They might not agree whether 'twas a cousin or a grandmother or a step-child, or whether it lived in Californy or the Cape of Good Hope, but they all know it's dead now, and we've got anywheres from a postage stamp to a hogshead of diamonds. Serena, if you hear yells for help this afternoon, don't pay any attention. It'll only mean that my patience has run out and I'm tryin' to make this community short one devilish fool at least. There'll be enough left; he'll never be missed.”
“Daniel, I never saw you so worked up. You must expect people to be excited. I'm excited myself.”
The captain wiped his forehead with his napkin. “I ain't exactly a graven image, now that you mention it,” he admitted. “But you and I have got some excuse and they ain't. Haven't they been in to see you; or did you lock the doors?”
“I have had callers, of course. Mrs. Berry was here, and Mrs. Tripp, and the Cahoon girls, and Issachar Eldredge's wife. The first four pretended they came on lodge business, and the Eldredge woman to get my recipe for chocolate doughnuts; but, of course, I knew what they really came for. Daniel, HOW do you suppose the news got out so soon? I didn't tell a soul and you promised you wouldn't.”