e first two weeks the count paid his board like a major; then
he let it slide. Jonadab and me was a little worried, but he was
advertising us like fun, his photographs--snap shots by Peter--was
getting into the papers, so we judged he was a good investment. But
Peter got bluer and bluer.

One night we was in the setting room--me and Jonadab and the count and
Ebenezer. The "queen" and the rest of the boarders was abed.

The count was spinning a pigeon English yarn of how he'd fought a duel
with rapiers. When he'd finished, old Dillaway pounded his knee and sung
out:

"That's bus'ness! That's the way to fix 'em! No lawsuits, no argument,
no delays. Just take 'em out and punch holes in 'em. Did you hear that,
Brown?"

"Yes, I heard it," says Peter, kind of absent-minded like. "Fighting
with razors, wan't it?"

Now there wan't nothing to that--'twas just some of Brown's sarcastic
spite getting the best of him--but I give you my word that the count
turned yellow under his brown skin, kind of like mud rising from the
bottom of a pond.

"What-a you say?" he says, bending for'ards.

"Mr. Brown was mistaken, that's all," says Dillaway; "he meant rapiers."

"But why-a razors--why-a razors?" says the count.

Now I was watching Brown's face, and all at once I see it light up
like you'd turned a searchlight on it. He settled back in his chair and
fetched a long breath as if he was satisfied. Then he grinned and begged
pardon and talked a blue streak for the rest of the evening.

Next day he was the happiest thing in sight, and when Miss Dillaway and
the count went Lover's Nesting he didn't seem to care a bit. All of
a sudden he told Jonadab and me that he was going up to Boston that
evening on bus'ness and wouldn't be back for a day or so. He wouldn't
tell what the bus'ness was, either, but just whistled and laughed and
sung, "Good-by, Susannah; don't you grieve for me," till train time.

He was back again three nights afterward, and he come right out to the
barn without going nigh the house. He had another feller with him, a
kind of shabby dressed Italian man with curly hair.

"Fellers," he says to me and Jonadab, "this is my friend, Mr. Macaroni;
he's going to engineer the barber shop for a while."

Well, we'd just let our other barber go, so we didn't think anything of
this, but when he said that his friend Spaghetti was going to stay in
the barn for a day or so, and that we needn't mention that he was there,
we t