I was
talkin' to his nurse only the other day. He says it's a hopeless
case."
"Fortunately his sister can be here with him."
"By gosh, she ain't nothin' like him," confided Peter. "She's all fuss
an' feathers an' he is jest as simple as you er me. Nothin' fluffy
about him, I c'n tell ye. Course, he must 'a' had a screw loose
some'eres when he made sich a botch of that house up there, but it's
his'n an' there ain't no law ag'in a man doin' what he pleases with
his own property." He sighed deeply. "I'm jest as well pleased to go
as not," he went on. "Mrs. Collier's got a lot o' money of her own,
an' she's got highfalutin' New York ideas that don't seem to jibe with
mine. Used to be a time when everything was nice an' peaceful up here,
with Sally Perkins doin' the cookin' and her daughter waitin' table,
but 'tain't that way no more. Got to have a man cook an' men
waitresses, an' a butteler. An' it goes ag'in the grain to set down to
a meal with them hayseeds from Italy. You never saw sich table
manners."
He rambled on for some minutes, expanding under the soulful influence
of his own woes and the pleasure of having a visible auditor instead
of the make-believe ones he conjured out of the air at times when
privacy afforded him the opportunity to lament aloud.
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