robable of licked that man, but they's no
system in mixing up with them well-dressed men in towns where they think
you are a tramp. The judge will give you the worst of it.

He rung the door bell and the girl that opened the door she looked kind
o' surprised when she seen me, and in we went.

"Tell Professor Booth that Doctor Wilkins wants to see him again,"
says the man a-holt o' me, not letting loose none. And we says nothing
further till the perfessor comes, which he does, slow and absent-minded.
When he seen me he took off his glasses so's he could see me better, and
he says:

"What is that you have there, Doctor Wilkins?"

"A guest for you," says Doctor Wilkins, grinning all over hisself. "I
found him leaving your house. And you being under quarantine, and me
being secretary to the board of health, and the city pest-house being
crowded too full already, I'll have to ask you to keep him here till
we get Miss Margery onto her feet again," he says. Or they was words to
that effect, as the lawyers asts you.

"Dear me," says Perfesser Booth, kind o' helpless like. And he
comes over closet to me and looks me all over like I was one of them
amphimissourian lizards in a free museum. And then he goes to the foot
of the stairs and sings out in a voice that was so bleached-out and
flat-chested it would of looked jest like him himself if you could of
saw it--"Estelle," he sings out, "oh, Estelle!"

Estelle, she come down stairs looking like she was the perfessor's big
brother. I found out later she was his old maid sister. She wasn't no
spring chicken, Estelle wasn't, and they was a continuous grin on her
face. I figgered it must of froze there years and years ago. They was
a kid about ten or eleven years old come along down with her, that had
hair down to its shoulders and didn't look like it knowed whether it was
a girl or a boy. Miss Estelle, she looks me over in a way that makes me
shiver, while the doctor and the perfessor jaws about whose fault it is
the smallpox sign ain't been hung out. And when she was done listening
she says to the perfessor: "You had better go back to your laboratory."
And the perfessor he went along out, and the doctor with him.

"What are you going to do with him, Aunt Estelle?" the kid asts her.

"What would YOU suggest, William, Dear?" asts his aunt. I ain't feeling
very comfortable, and I was getting all ready jest to natcherally bolt
out the front door now the doctor was gone. Then I t