Side-stepping with Shorty Part 16

They'd want to know how many bath rooms, if there was malaria, and all about the plumbin', and what the neighbours was like. But livin' at the club don't put you wise to them tricks. Pinckney, he just rings up a real estate agent, gets him to read off a list, says, "I'll take No.

3," and it's all over. Next day they move out.

Was he stung? Well, not so bad as you'd think. Course, he's stuck about two prices for rent, and he signs a lease without readin' farther than the "Whereas"; but, barrin' a few things like haircloth furniture and rooms that have been shut up so long they smell like the subcellars in a brewery, he says the ranch wa'n't so bad. The outdoors was good, anyway. There was lots of it, acres and acres, with trees, and flower gardens, and walks, and fish ponds, and everything you could want for a pair of youngsters that needed room. I could see that myself.

"Say, Pinckney," says I, as we drives in through the grounds, "if you can't get along with Jack and Jill in a place of this kind you'd better give up. Why, all you got to do is to turn 'em loose."

"Wait!" says he. "You haven't heard it all."

"Let it come, then," says I.

"We will look at the house first," says he.

The kids wa'n't anywhere in sight; so we starts right in on the tour of inspection. It was a big, old, slate roofed baracks, with jigsaw work on the eaves, and a lot of d.i.n.ky towers frescoed with lightnin' rods.

There was furniture to match, mostly the marble topped, black walnut kind, that was real stylish back in the '70's.

In the hall we runs across Snivens. He was the butler; but you wouldn't guess it unless you was told. Kind of a cross between a horse doctor and a missionary, I should call him--one of these short legged, barrel podded gents, with a pair of white wind harps framin' up a putty coloured face that was ornamented with a set of the solemnest lookin'

lamps you ever saw off a stuffed owl.

"Gee, Pinckney!" says I, "who unloaded that on you!"

"Snivens came with the place," says he.

"He looks it," says I. "I should think that face would sour milk.

Don't he scare the twins?"

"Frighten Jack and Jill?" says Pinckney. "Not if he had horns and a tail! They seem to take him as a joke. But he does make all the rest of us feel creepy."

"Why don't you write him his release?" says I.

"Can't," says Pinckney. "He is one of the conditions in the contract--he and the urns."

"The urns?" says I.

"Yes," says Pinckney, sighin' deep. "We are coming to them now. There they are."

With that we steps into one of the front rooms, and he lines me up before a white marble mantel that is just as cheerful and tasty as some of them pieces in Greenwood Cemetery. On either end was what looks to be a bronze flower pot.

"To your right," says Pinckney, "is Grandfather; to your left, Aunt Sabina."

"What's the josh?" says I.

"Shorty," says he, heavin' up another sigh, "you are now in the presence of sacred dust. These urns contain the sad fragments of two great Van Rusters."

"Fragments is good," says I. "Couldn't find many to keep, could they?

Did they go up with a powder mill, or fall into a stone crusher?"

"Cremated," says Pinckney.

Then I gets the whole story of the two old maids that Pinckney rented the place from. They were the last of the clan. In their day the Van Rusters had headed the Westchester battin' list, ownin' about half the county and gettin' their names in the paper reg'lar. But they'd been peterin' out for the last hundred years or so, and when it got down to the Misses Van Rusters, a pair of thin edged, old battle axes that had never wore anything but c.r.a.pe and jet bonnets, there wa'n't much left of the estate except the mortgages and the urns.

Rentin' the place furnished was the last card in the box, and Pinckney turns up as the willin' victim. When he comes to size up what he's drawn, and has read over the lease, he finds he's put his name to a lot he didn't dream about. Keepin' Snivens on the pay roll, promisin' not to disturb the urns, usin' the furniture careful, and havin' the gra.s.s cut in the private buryin' lot was only a few that he could think of off hand.

"You ain't a tenant, Pinckney," says I; "you're a philanthropist."

"I feel that way," says he. "At first, I didn't know which was worse, Snivens or the urns. But I know now--it is the urns. They are driving me to distraction."

"Ah, do a lap!" says I. "Course, I give in that there might be better parlour ornaments than potted ancestors, specially when they belong to someone else; but they don't come extra, do they? I thought it was the twins that was worryin' you?"

"That is where the urns come in," says he. "Here the youngsters are now. Step back in here and watch."

He pulls me into the next room, where we could see through the draperies. There's a whoop and a hurrah outside, the door bangs, and in tumbles the kids, with a nurse taggin' on behind. The youngsters makes a bee line for the mantelpiece and sings out:

"h.e.l.lo, Grandfather! h.e.l.lo, Aunt Sabina! Look what we brought this time!"

"Stop it! Stop it!" says the nurse, her eyes buggin' out.

"Boo! Fraid cat!" yells the twins, and nursy skips. Then they begins to unload the stuff they've lugged in, pilin' it up alongside the urns, singin' out like auctioneers, "There's some daisies for Aunt Sabina!

And wild strawberries for Grandfather! And a mud turtle for aunty!

And a bird's nest for Grandfather!" windin' up the performance by joinin' hands and goin' through a reg'lar war dance.

Pinckney explains how this was only a sample of what had been goin' on ever since they heard Snivens tellin' what was in the urns. They'd stood by, listenin' with their mouths and ears wide open, and then they'd asked questions until everyone was wore out tryin' to answer 'em. But the real woe came when the yarn got around among the servants and they begun leavin' faster'n Pinckney's Aunt Mary could send out new ones from town.

"Maybe the kids'll get tired of it in a few days," says I.

"Exactly what I thought," says Pinckney; "but they don't. It's the best game they can think of, and if I allow them they will stay in here by the hour, cutting up for the benefit of Grandfather and Aunt Sabina.

It's morbid. It gets on one's nerves. My aunt says she can't stand it much longer, and if she goes I shall have to break up. If you're a friend of mine, Shorty, you'll think of some way to get those youngsters interested in something else."

"Why don't you buy 'em a pony cart?" says I.

"I've bought two," says he; "and games and candy, and parrots and mechanical toys enough to stock a store. Still they keep this thing up."

"And if you quit the domestic game, the kids have to go to some home, and you go back to the club?" says I.

"That's it," says he.

"And when Miss Gertie comes on, and finds you've renigged, it's all up between you and her, eh?" says I.

Pinckney groans.

"G'wan!" says I. "Go take a sleep."

With that I steps in and shows myself to the kids. They yells and makes a dash for me. Inside of two minutes I've been introduced to Grandfather and Aunt Sabina, made to do a duck before both jars, and am planted on the haircloth sofa with a kid holdin' either arm, while they puts me through the third degree. They want information.

"Did you ever see folks burned and put in jars?" says Jack.

"No," says I; "but I've seen pickled ones jugged. I hear you've got some ponies."

"Two," says Jill; "spotted ones. Would you want to be burned after you was a deader?"