it, never, the way that
hired man talks to him; you'd think he was the Queen o' Sheba.

"An' he goes squintin' about here an' there, changin' this an' that, an'
singin' away an' laughin'--you'd think he'd have a fit. Seems's if he
loved to putter about 'n' fool with things in a room, like women.
I heard him say so myself. I was helpin' Miss Gould with the other
rooms--she ain't seen his; she don't know no more'n the dead what he's
got in there--an' I was by the door when he said it.

"'Thompson,' says he, 'if I don't keep my present situation,' says he,
'I c'n go out as a decorator an' furnisher. Don't you think I'd succeed,
Thompson?' says he. 'Yes, sir,' says Thompson.

"'You see, we've got to do something Thompson,' says he. 'We've got ter
justify our existence, Thompson,' an' he commenced to laugh. 'Yes, sir,'
says Thompson. Beats all I ever see, the way that man answers back!"

An almost unprecedented headache, brought on by her unremitting labor in
effecting the change in the Rooms, kept Miss Gould in the house for two
days after the new headquarters had been satisfactorily arranged; and
as Mr. Welles had refused to open his office for inspection till it was
completely furnished, she did not enter that characteristic apartment
till the third day of its official existence.

As she went through the narrow hallway connecting the four rooms on
which the social regeneration of her village depended, she caught the
sweet low thrum of a guitar and a too familiarly seductive voice burst
forth into a chant, whose literal significance she was unable to grasp,
owing to lack of familiarity with the language in which it was couched,
but whose general tenor no one could mistake, so tender and arch was the
rendering.

With a vague thrill of apprehension she threw open the door.

Sunk in cushions, a tea-cup on the arm of his chair, a guitar resting on
his white flannel sleeve, reclined the director of the Rooms. Over
his head hung a large and exquisite copy of the Botticelli Venus.
Miss Gould's horrified gaze fled from this work of art to rest on a
representation in bronze of the same reprehensible goddess, clothed,
to be sure, a little more in accordance with the views of a retired New
England community, yet leaving much to be desired in this direction.
Kitty Waters attentively filled his empty cup, beaming the while, and
the once errant Annabel, sitting on a low stool at his feet, with a red
bow in her pretty hair, and h