“I did. And he threatened to have me arrested for defamatory language. But he's right—legally. He's got your little widow's two thousand dollars, every cent of it, and she's got a piece of stamped paper.”
“Why isn't it a case for our Legal Aid?”
“I've just been to Merrivale. There isn't a thing to be done.” Following the “Legal Aid” line, Cyrus's mind took a sudden but logical jump. “I never expected to meet a meaner cuss than the Meanest Man in Our Square,” he observed. “But I have.”
“The very thing!” cried the Bonnie Lassie. “How clever of you, Cyrus! I mean, how clever of me! Molly wants a place. She's all over that foolish suicide notion. She shall be Mr. Miles Morse's housekeeper.”
“But he wanted an old woman,” objected Cyrus.
“How is he to tell if he never sees her? I'll manage that,” retorted his wife confidently. “The only thing is, will she take a place that is almost like domestic service?”
As to this Molly made not the slightest difficulty. She had regained her courage and her Irish fighting spirit, and she was now ready to face life and make it give her an honest return for honest work again; ready for anything, indeed, except an attempt to get her money back which might involve her seeing Mr. D. Wiggett. At the mere mention of his name she fell into a cold and shuddering silence.
With brief preliminaries, and on the Bonnie Lassie's guarantee of “old Mrs. Dunstan's” reliability, that semi-mythical person was installed as Miles Morse's housekeeper and general factotum, having taken the informal triple oath of her employment: industry, senility, and invisibility. Six dollars a week was the wage which the Goddess from the Machine had wrung from the Meanest Man's violent protests, with a warning that it would have to be increased later on. The instructions given to the new employee were that she was to keep out of her employer's sight; or if he should arrive at an untimely hour she was to huddle into a shawl or handkerchief and conceal her age behind a toothache.
For six weeks all went well and simply. Miles Morse was obliged to confess, grudgingly, that his house was more livable and comfortable. Dust disappeared. The furniture took to arranging itself with less stiffness and more amiability. When he gave a whist party of an evening, the cigars were in place, the ash trays ready, the rooms aired and fresh, and the ice box stocked, all by invisible hands. Orders were issued and requisitions made through the Bonnie Lassie. Meeting her neighbor in Our Square one day, the Bonnie Lassie hinted at the ten-dollar check for the Legal Aid Society. “When I'm sure I'm satisfied,” said the Meanest Man, bending frowning brows from above his owlish glasses upon her. “D' you know what that old hag has been up to?”
“What old hag?” inquired the Bonnie Lassie unguardedly.