Onclouded prosperity had hardened Elnathan's heart—it will sometimes—hard as Pharo's.
But he wuz a visitor and one of the relations on his side, and I done well by him, killed a duck and made quite a fuss.
The business of settlin' the estate took quite a spell, but he didn't hurry any.
He said "the nurse wuz good as gold, she would take good care of The Little Maid. She wrote to him every day;" and so she did, the hussy, all through that dretful time to come.
Oh dear me! oh dear suz!
The nurse, Jean, had a sister who had come over from England with a cargo of trouble and children—after Jean had come on to California.
And Elnathan, good-natured when he wuz a mind to be, had listened to Jean's story of her sister's woes, with poverty, hungery children, and a drunken husband, and had given this sister two small rooms in one of his tenement housen, and asked so little for them, that they wuz livin' quite comfortable, if anybody could live comfortable, in such a stiflin', nasty spot.
Their rooms wuz on top of the house, and wuz kept clean, and so high up that they could get a breath of air now and then.
But the way up to 'em led over a crazy pair of stairs, so broken and rotten that even the Agent wuz disgusted with 'em and had wrote a letter to Elnathan asking for new stairs, and new sanitary arrangements, as the deaths wuz so frequent in that particular tenement, that the Agent wuz frightened, for fear they would be complained of by the City Fathers—though them old fathers can stand a good deal without complainin'.
Wall, the Agent wrote, but Elnathan wuz at that time buildin' a new orchid house (he had more'n a dozen of 'em before) for The Little Maid; she loved these half-human blossoms.