Jarvis ain't one of the joshin' kind, though, same as Pinckney. He had this weddin' business on his mind, and there wa'n't much room for anything else. Seems the old lady who'd quit livin' was a relative he didn't know much about.
"I remember seeing her only once," says Jarvis, "and then I was a little chap. Perhaps that's why I was such a favorite of hers. She always sent me a prayer-book every Christmas."
"Must have thought you was hard on prayer-books," says I. "She wa'n't batty, was she?"
Jarvis wouldn't say that; but he didn't deny that there might have been a few cobwebs in the belfry. Aunt Amelia—that's what he called her—had lived by herself for so long, and had coaxed up such a case of nerves, that there was no tellin'. The family didn't even know she was abroad until they heard she'd died there.
"You see," says Jarvis, "the deuce of it is the cottage is just as she stepped out of it, full of a lot of old truck that I've either got to sell or burn, I suppose. And it's a beastly nuisance."
"It's a shame," says I. "But where is this Nightingale Cottage?"
"Why, it's in Primrose Park, up in Westchester County," says he.
With that I pricks up my ears. You know I've been puttin' my extra-long green in pickle for the last few years, layin' for a chance to place 'em where I could turn 'em over some day and count both sides. And Westchester sounded right.
"Say," says I, leadin' him over to the telephone booth, "you sit down there and ring up some real-estate guy out in Primrose Park and get a bid for that place. It'll be about half or two-thirds what it's worth. I'll give you that, and ten per cent. more on account of the fixin's. Is it a go?"
Was it? Mr. Jarvis had central and was callin' up Primrose Park before I gets through, and inside of an hour I'm a taxpayer. I've made big lumps of money quicker'n that, but I never spent such a chunk of it so swift before. But Jarvis went off with his mind easy, and I was satisfied. In the evenin' I dropped around to see the Whaleys.