e's going to have a proper home and a housekeeper, why, it'll be safe.

"Everybody, of course, is crazy about the housewarming the minister is
going to give next week. I guess everybody is going. It'll be a fine
night for thieves, Bessie Williams says, with every soul gone. That
girl's mind just naturally turns to evil. She knows there ain't ever
been a thing stolen in this town, less it was a kiss or two. But
Bessie's the only one, so far as I could hear, who was borrowing
trouble. The rest of the town is dying to get into that house that's
been closed so long. And everybody's curious to know just what Hen
Tomlins's been doing to the furniture. You know when the minister
found out what a fine wood-carver and cabinet-maker Hen was he had him
go through the house. And they say that Bernard Rollins, the
portraiture man, is mixed up in the housewarming too. But nobody can
figure out how. And that ain't the worst. Uncle Tony says that he
heard that the minister bought out the poolroom man, because some one
saw the music box being hauled over to the minister's house. You know
Jake and some others were planning to run that poolroom man out of
town, even whispering about tar and feathers. But the minister asked
them to let him manage and try to fix things up first. So they did and
he's done it, because the poolroom's closed; the stuff went out
yesterday and Effie Struby's brother Alf swears he saw that poolroom
man fooling with the minister's automobile out in the barn. But you
know how near-sighted Alf is and his word ain't credited much, and
everybody's so busy getting ready for the party that they can't stop to
investigate. And ain't it funny how none of us don't somehow ask the
minister things, just wait until he tells us? And ain't he got a funny
way of just talking about nothing special, only being pleasant, and
then letting you find out weeks after that he did tell you something
that you'd been needing to know? My! I bet that boy could give a
child castor oil and make him honestly think it was candy. Why, they
say that as far as anybody can find out, he's never give that poolroom
man even one good talking to. Jake, who's been itching to lambaste the
man, says 's-far's he can see, it was the poolroom man who did all the
talking. And once Jake says he just dropped in himself, just to see
what line of argument the minister was using, and he says that he'd be
danged if the minister did a blessed thing