“Yours, Ebeneezer Judson.”
“I knowed it,” she said to herself, excitedly. “Ebeneezer was a hard man, but he always kep’ his word. Dear me! What makes me so trembly!”
She removed all the bedclothes and pounded the pillows and mattress in vain, then turned her attention to the furniture. It was almost one o’clock when Mrs. Dodd finally retired, worn in body and jaded in spirit, but still far from discouraged.
“Ebeneezer must have mistook the room,” she said to herself, “but how could he unless his mind was failin’? I’ve had this now, goin’ on ten year.”
In the night she dreamed of finding money in the bureau, and got up to see if by chance she had not received mysterious guidance from an unknown source. There was money in the bureau, sure enough, but it was only two worn copper cents wrapped in many thicknesses of old newspaper, and she went unsuspiciously back to bed.
“He’s mistook the room,” she breathed, drowsily, as she sank into troubled slumber, “an’ to-morrer I’ll have it changed. It’s just as well I’ve scared them others off, if so be I have.”