he key with me, as it was an automatic lock, and
it really was none of my business if folks moved out and left the
lights on. Still it seemed irregular, and when I got home I tried to
get Mr. Nesbitt on the phone. But he and Mr. Orchard had left the
office and gone out into the country for the afternoon.
Business,--they never go to the country for pleasure. So I comfortably
forgot all about the electric lights.

"But Monday afternoon, Mr. Nesbitt happened to remark that his family
would not move in until Wednesday. Then I remembered.

"I said, 'What is the idea in having the electric lights burning down
there?'

"'What?' he shouted. He always shouts unless he has a particular
reason for whispering.

"'Why, the electric lights were burning in the house when I went by
Saturday.'

"'All of them?'

"'Looked it from the outside.'

"'Did you turn them off?'

"'I should say not. I hadn't the key. Besides I didn't turn them on.
I didn't know who did, nor why. I just left them alone.'

"That meant a neat little electric bill of about six dollars, and Mr.
Nesbitt talked to me in a very un-neutral way, and I got my hat and
walked off home. He called me up after a while and tried to make
peace, but I said I was ill from the nervous shock and couldn't work
any more that day. So he sent me a box of candy to restore my
shattered nerves, and the next day they were all right.

"One day I got rather belligerent myself. It was just a week after I
came. One of his new tenants phoned in that Nesbitt must get the
rubbish out of the alley back of his house or he would move out. Mr.
Nesbitt tried to evade a promise, but the man was curt. 'You get that
rubbish out to-day, or I get out to-morrow.'

"Mr. Nesbitt was just going to court, so he told me to call up a
garbage man and get the rubbish removed.

"I didn't know the garbage men from the ministers, and they weren't
classified in the directory. So I went to Mr. Orchard, a youngish sort
of man, very pleasant, but slicker than Nesbitt himself.

"I said, not too amiably, 'Who are the garbage haulers in this town?'

"He said: 'Search me,' and went on writing.

"I dropped the directory on his desk, and said, "'Well, if Mr. Nesbitt
loses a good tenant, I should worry.'

"Then he looked up and said: 'Oh, let's see. There's Jim Green, and
Softy Meadows, and--and--Tully Scott--and--that's enough.'

"So I called them up. Jim Green was in jail for petty larceny.