Page:Middle Aged Love Stories (IA middleagedlove00bacorich).djvu/92

 this room, Thompson,’ says he to that hired man, ‘the things was spillin’ over. We’ll make it a bower o’ beauty, Thompson,’ says he. ‘Yes, sir,’ says the man. That’s all he ever says, you might say. I never see nothin’ like it, never, the way that hired man talks to him; you’d think he was the Queen o’ Sheba.

“An’ he goes squintin’ about here an’ there, changin’ this an’ that, an’ singin’ away an’ laughin’—you’d think he’d have a fit. Seems’s if he loved to putter about ’n’ fool with things in a room, like women. I heard him say so myself. I was helpin’ Miss Gould with the other rooms—she ain’t seen his; she don’t know no more’n the dead what he’s got in there—an’ I was by the door when he said it.

“‘Thompson,’ says he, ‘if I don’t keep my present situation,’ says he, ‘I c’n go out as a decorator an’ furnisher. Don’t you think I’d succeed, Thompson?’ says he. ‘