“Well, he was eccentric in some particulars,” admitted Jacob cautiously.
“As for instance?”
“Let me think. Whenever there was a long drought he used to claim that he was a tree-toad, and he’d climb the ancestral elm up at the Westchester place and squawk for rain.”
“Eccentric, as you say. Anything else?”
“He had the largest collection of tin-can labels in Westchester County. At least, he boasted that it was the largest, and I never heard any one dispute it.”
“What did he do with ’em?”
“Same as any kind of a collecting bug does with his collection; nothing.”
“I see. Is that all?”
“Everything I can recall except that every May Day he used to put on a high hat and a pink sash and dance around a Maypole in Central Park. As he didn’t care whose Maypole it happened to be, he usually got arrested.”
“I see. And the rest of the family; did they show any symptoms?”