Nothin' that me or Simeon could say would make him change the course a point. So Phinney went up to the Golconda House and got our bags, and at half-past four that afternoon the three of us was in a hired hack bound uptown.
"On the way Sam was full of fun as ever. He laughed and joked, and asked questions about East Harniss till you couldn't rest. All of a sudden he slaps his knee and sings out:
"'There! I knew I'd forgotten somethin'. Our butler left yesterday, and I was to call at the intelligence office on my way home and see if they'd scared up a new one.'
"I looked at Simeon, and he at me.
"'Hum!' says I, thinkin' about that 'modest' housekeepin'. 'Do you keep a butler?'
"'Not long,' says he, dry as a salt codfish. And that's all we could get out of him.
"I s'pose there's different kinds of modesty. We hadn't more'n got inside the gold-plated front door of that house when I decided that the Holden brand of housekeepin' wa'n't bashful enough to blush.
If I'D been runnin' that kind of a place, the only time I'd felt shy and retirin' was when the landlord came for the rent.
"One of the fo'mast hands--hired girls, I mean--went aloft to fetch Mrs. Holden, and when Grace came down she was just as nice and folksy and glad to see us as a body could be. But she looked sort of troubled, just the same.
"'I'm ever so glad you're here,' says she to me and Simeon. 'But, oh, Sam! it's a shame the way things happen. Cousin Harriet and Archie came this afternoon to stay until to-morrow. They're on their way South. And I have promised that you and I shall take Harriet to see Marlowe to-night. Of course we won't do it now, under any consideration, but you know what she is.'
"Sam seemed to know. He muttered somethin' that sounded like a Scripture text. Simeon spoke up prompt.
"'Indeed you will,' says he, decided. 'Me and Hiram ain't that kind. We've got relations of our own, and we know what it means when they come a-visitin'. You and Mr. Holden'll take your comp'ny and go to see--whatever 'tis you want to see, and we'll make ourselves to home till you get back. Yes, you will, or we clear out this minute.'
"They didn't want to, but we was sot, and so they give in finally.
It seemed that this Cousin Harriet was a widow relation of the Holdens, who lived in a swell country house over in Connecticut somewhere, and was rich as the rest of the tribe. Archie was her son. 'Hers and the Evil One's,' Sam said.
"We didn't realize how much truth there was in this last part until we run afoul of Archie and his ma at dinner time. Cousin Harriet was tall and middlin' slim, thirty-five years old, maybe, at a sale for taxes, but discounted to twenty at her own valuation. She was got up regardless, and had a kind of chronic, tired way of talkin', and a condescendin' look to her, as if she was on top of Bunker Hill monument, and all creation was on its knees down below. She didn't warm up to Simeon and me much; eyed us over through a pair of gilt spyglasses, and admitted that she was 'charmed, I'm sure.'
Likewise, she was afflicted with 'nerves,' which must be a divil of a disease--for everybody but the patient, especial.
