in'. 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 kn