“Because I want you to, for one reason.... There, there, Nabby! don’t argue about it. I know what I’m doing. At any rate I guess I can spend my own money, if I want to.”
“I guess you can. I don’t know who’s liable to stop you doin’ anything you want to, far’s that goes. Nobody has done it yet, though there’s a good many tried.... But while I’m talkin’ I might just as well talk a little mite more. I don’t see why you keep on livin’ in this great ark of a place. ’Tain’t a bit of my business, but if I was you I’d sell—or rent it, or somethin’—and have a little house that I wouldn’t get lost in every time I went upstairs.”
Her employer shook his head. “This is my house and I stay in it,” he said, crisply.
“Well, if you will you will, of course. When you bark at a body that way there ain’t a mite of use barkin’ back, I know that. And I realize that you and—and her that’s gone had the best time in the world buildin’ over this house and riggin’ it up. It’s just that I know how lonesome you are—a blind person could see that.... Here, here! You mustn’t get up from that table yet, Cap’n Foster. You’ve got to have some more of my tautog chowder.”
“No. Had enough, Nabby.”
“My soul! Well, then you must have a helpin’ of baked indian puddin’. I made it ’special, because I knew how you liked it. Don’t tell me you won’t touch that puddin’!”
“All right, all right. Bring it along. And I’ll have another cup of tea, if you’ve got it.”
“Got it! I’ve got a gallon. That Varunas man of mine would drink a hogshead of strong tea all to himself any time if I’d let him. I tell him no wonder he’s all shriveled up like a wet leather apron.”
She disappeared into the kitchen to return, a moment later, with the refilled cup. She was talking when she went out and talking when she came back.
“You hadn’t ought to keep on livin’ in this house all alone,” she declared, with emphasis. “I said it afore and now I say it again. It ain’t natural to live that way. It ain’t good for man to be alone, that’s what the Good Book says. Land sakes! afore I’d do that I’d—I’d do the way the rich man in the—what-d’ye-call-it—parallel done. I’d go out into the highways and byways and fetch in the lame and the halt and the blind. Yes, indeed I would! I’d do it for company and I wouldn’t care how halt they was, neither; they’d be better’n nobody. Speakin’ about that parallel,” she added, reflectively. “I’ve never been real sure just what ailed a person when he was a ‘halt.’ A horse—mercy knows I hear horse talk enough from Varunas!—has somethin’ sometimes that’s called the ‘spring halt,’ but that, so he tells me, is a kind of lameness. Now the parallel tells about the lame and the halt, so— Good gracious! Why, you ain’t through, be you, Cap’n Foster? You ain’t hardly touched your puddin’.”