Mrs. Macomber hesitated. "Nothin' much," she replied, after a moment. "Of course he gets a little behind sometimes, everybody does that, you know. But then his dividend payments or somethin' come to him and he pays right up in a lump. It's kind of nice havin' it come that way, seems more, you know."
"Yes. So long as it keeps on comin'. His dividends, you say? I thought the story was that he hadn't any stocks left to get dividends from. I thought he told all hands that he was poverty-stricken, that when he was cut out of the Harbor property and the fifty thousand he hadn't a copper."
"Oh no not as bad as that. He had some stocks and bonds, of course. Why, if he hadn't where would he get any money from? How could he live?"
"I don't know. He seems to be livin', though, and pretty well. Has he got the parlor yet?"
"Yes, and it's fixed up so pretty. He's got his pictures and things around. Wouldn't you like to see it? He's out, you know."
They went into the parlor and the bedroom adjoining, that which the captain had occupied during his stay. Both rooms were as neat as wax—Sears expected that, knowing his sister's housekeeping—but he had scarcely expected to find the rooms so changed. The furniture was the same, but the wall decorations were not.
"What's become of the alum basket and the wax wreath and the Rock of Ages chromo?" he asked.
"Oh, he took 'em down. That is, he didn't do it himself, of course, but he had Joel do it. They're up attic. Mr. Phillips said they was so like the things that his wife used to have in the dear old home that he couldn't bear to see 'em. They reminded him so of her. He asked if we would mind if they was removed and we said no, of course."
"Humph! And the Macomber family coffin plates, those you had set out on black velvet with all Joel's dead relations names on 'em, in the plush and gilt frame? Are those up attic, too?"
"Yes."