She laughed merrily at the possible joke against them all. And yet what a pity that would be, too, for Samuel was a pleasant, self-reliant looking little man with his head hanging sideways as if he had never lifted it from a one-sided attack of the mumps. Somehow this attitude made him appear younger. But the wig! That was too much in evidence and they all decided that it must be clipped at once. Samuel did not scan the house with lover-like eagerness as he came up the steps. Instead, he watched the basket with intense interest—so intense that he stumbled on the way.
“I bet he’s got a dog in it!” cried one of the candidates. “I will not stand no leetle measly pet dog around the house, a-sheddin’ hair all over the parlor sofy. I ain’t agoin’ downstairs!”
But she went with the others and met Mr. Jessup. The woman with the basket was nowhere in sight, having been relegated to the dining-room. No attempt whatever was made to explain her to the old ladies. Samuel Jessup was immediately enthroned by the matron in her private office; and one by one in alphabetical order of their names, Jessica sent the candidates to him, thinking that this would be more delicate than to have them all face him at once. Delicacy in this affair did not seem so difficult after coming face to face with little Mr. Jessup. Very modestly, and with his head more on one side than ever, he told the matron that she must convey to the ladies his doubts as to any one of them accepting him. He thought it was very kind of them to receive him anyway, and—this with a quick keen look into Jessica’s wise and bonny face—he hoped that they would not laugh at him.
The first five filed out of the room after only a few moments’ conversation, each briefly explaining in her turn why Mr. Jessup “hadn’t took” with her. One did not like the way he held his head. One never could stand that wig. She knew that it got askew every time he took a nap. One thought him too much like her dead husband. One thought him too unlike her departed John to make a happy union possible. One said she never could bear a pump dribbling water in the kitchen; and he was too stubborn and “sot” in his ways to take it out. Then went in the sixth—she who had not rebuked the deceit of Mrs. Young’s dyed hair and she who hated pet dogs. After a longer period, she came out and with customary candor bluntly declared that she would have had Samuel Jessup in a minute, but she saw that she did not take with him.
“The woman that gits him will be lucky,” she declared, “basket and all.” Nothing more would she tell. Then into the private room went the seventh old lady. She immediately demanded of Samuel an explanation of the woman and the basket; whereupon Samuel said that he refused to be questioned by any woman and he knew that they could not get along well together. She came out sniffing contemptuously, and vowed that in her opinion there was something very mysterious about this man. Number Eight went in even more eagerly, on tip-toe. She had read romances all her life. She loved mysteries and she was so sensitive about living in an Old Ladies’ Home partly on charity that she would have married any man that asked her. Almost any man—but not quite. She and Samuel Jessup talked together for a long time.
“I am sure we would git along,” said Samuel at last, his heart stirred to sympathy for one who hated a Home of this sort with the same proud hatred that he had borne. “But,” he went on, “before I let you decide, I be agoin’ to take you into the dining-room and show you the basket. What belongs in the basket belongs with me an’s agoin’ with me. I ain’t much ter git, but come an’ see the basket!”
Her romantic old heart beating high with excitement, Miss Ruby tip-toed ahead of him, across a tiny, dark back hall into the dining-room. On the very threshold she paused, her eyes popping out of her head as she looked within; then she uttered a faint scream and went scuttling into a corner among the shadows of the dim passage.
“Good-bye, Mr. Jessup!” she called tragically. “Good-bye!” and there ended Samuel Jessup’s affair with Miss Ruby.
A humorous light twinkled in the old man’s eye as he went back into Jessica’s office and waited for the ninth candidate. She was a woman famous in the Home for always managing to find some one to wait upon her, and she wanted a house of her own with several servants, an unobtrusive husband, and stained glass windows in the parlor.
“I kinder fancied stained glass winders myself,” said Samuel. “But you can’t be keepin’ a hull passel o’ servants. One servant gal—that’s all I agree to, ma’am.”