hinks it mightn't be
no bad place to stay in fur a couple o' days, even risking the smallpox.
Fur I had riccolected I couldn't ketch it nohow, having been vaccinated
a few months before in Terry Hutt by compulsive medical advice, me being
fur a while doing some work on the city pavements through a mistake
about me in the police court.

William Dear looks at me like it was the day of judgment and his job was
to keep the fatted calves separate from the goats and prodigals, and he
says:

"If I were you, Aunt Estelle, the first thing would be to get his hair
cut and his face washed and then get him some clothes."

"William Dear is my friend," thinks I.

She calls James, which was a butler. James, he buttles me into a
bathroom the like o' which I never seen afore, and then he buttles me
into a suit o' somebody's clothes and into a room at the top o' the
house next to his'n, and then he comes back and buttles a comb and brush
at me. James was the most mournful-looking fat man I ever seen, and he
says that account of me not being respectable I will have my meals alone
in the kitchen after the servants has eat.

The first thing I knowed I been in that house more'n a week. I eat and I
slept and I smoked and I kind of enjoyed not worrying about things fur
a while. The only oncomfortable thing about being the perfessor's guest
was Miss Estelle. Soon's she found out I was a agnostic she took charge
o' my intellectuals and what went into 'em, and she makes me read things
and asts me about 'em, and she says she is going fur to reform me. And
whatever brand o' disgrace them there agnostics really is I ain't found
out to this day, having come acrost the word accidental.

Biddy Malone, which was the kitchen mechanic, she says the perfessor's
wife's been over to her mother's while this smallpox has been going on,
and they is a nurse in the house looking after Miss Margery, the little
kid that's sick. And Biddy, she says if she was Mrs. Booth she'd stay
there, too. They's been some talk, anyhow, about Mrs. Booth and a
musician feller around that there town. But Biddy, she likes Mrs. Booth,
and even if it was true, which it ain't Biddy says, who could of blamed
her? Fur things ain't joyous around that house the last year, since Miss
Estelle's come there to live. The perfessor, he's so full of scientifics
he don't know nothing with no sense to it, Biddy says. He's got more
money'n you can shake a stick at, and he don't have to do no w