o's billed
to marry that English girl, Lady Evelyn, next month. Well, Jarvis he was
all worked up. Oh, you couldn't guess it in a week. It was an awful
thing that happened to him. Just as he's got his trunk packed for
England, where the knot-tyin' is to take place, he gets word that some
old lady that was second cousin to his mother, or something like that,
has gone and died and left him all her property.

"Real thoughtless of her, wa'n't it?" says I.

"Well," says Jarvis, lookin' kind of foolish, "I expect she meant well
enough. I don't mind the bonds, and that sort of thing, but there's this
Nightingale Cottage. Now, what am I to do with that?"

"Raise nightingales for the trade," says I.

Jarvis ain't one of the joshin' kind, though, same as Pinckney. He had
this weddin' business on his mind, and there wa'n't much room for
anything else. Seems the old lady who'd quit livin' was a relative he
didn't know much about.

"I remember seeing her only once," says Jarvis, "and then I was a little
chap. Perhaps that's why I was such a favorite of hers. She always sent
me a prayer-book every Christmas."

"Must have thought you was hard on prayer-books," says I. "She wa'n't
batty, was she?"

Jarvis wouldn't say that; but he didn't deny that there might have been
a few cobwebs in the belfry. Aunt Amelia--that's what he called her--had
lived by herself for so long, and had coaxed up such a case of nerves,
that there was no tellin'. The family didn't even know she was abroad
until they heard she'd died there.

"You see," says Jarvis, "the deuce of it is the cottage is just as she
stepped out of it, full of a lot of old truck that I've either got to
sell or burn, I suppose. And it's a beastly nuisance."

"It's a shame," says I. "But where is this Nightingale Cottage?"

"Why, it's in Primrose Park, up in Westchester County," says he.

With that I pricks up my ears. You know I've been puttin' my extra-long
green in pickle for the last few years, layin' for a chance to place
'em where I could turn 'em over some day and count both sides. And
Westchester sounded right.

"Say," says I, leadin' him over to the telephone booth, "you sit down
there and ring up some real-estate guy out in Primrose Park and get a
bid for that place. It'll be about half or two-thirds what it's worth.
I'll give you that, and ten per cent. more on account of the fixin's. Is
it a go?"

Was it? Mr. Jarvis had central and was callin' up Primrose Park