Hepsey Burke Part 14

"More fun than a barrel of Bascoms--monkeys, I mean," he corrected himself, laughing at Betty's shocked expression.

[Ill.u.s.tration]

CHAPTER XII

HOUSE CLEANING AND BACHELORHOOD

Apart from Mrs. Burke, there was no one in the town who so completely surrendered to Mrs. Maxwell's charms as Jonathan Jackson, the Junior Warden. Betty had penetration enough to see, beneath the man's rough exterior, all that was fine and lovable, and she treated him with a jolly, friendly manner that warmed his heart.

One day she and Mrs. Burke went over to call on Jonathan, and found him sitting in the woodshed on a tub turned bottom upwards, looking very forlorn and disconsolate.

"What's the matter, Jonathan? You look as if you had committed the unpardonable sin," Hepsey greeted him.

"No, it 'aint me," Jonathan replied; "it's Mary McGuire that's the confounded sinner this time."

"Well, what's Mary been up to now?"

"Mary McGuire's got one of her attacks of house-cleanin' on, and I tell you it's a bad one. Drat the nuisance."

"Why Jonathan! Don't swear like that."

"Well, I be hanged if I can stand this sort of thing much longer.

Mary, she's the deuce and all, when she once gets started house-cleanin'."

"Oh dear," Mrs. Betty sympathized. "It's a bother, isnt it? But it doesn't take so long, and it will soon be over, won't it?"

"Well, I don't know as to that," replied Jonathan disconsolately.

"Mary McGuire seems to think that the whole house must be turned wrong side out, and every bit of furniture I've got deposited in the front yard. Now, Mrs. Betty, you just look over there once. There's yards and yards of clothes-line covered with carpets and rugs and curtains I've been ordered to clean. It's somethin' beyond words. The whole place looks as if there was goin' to be an auction, or a rummage sale, or as if we had moved out 'cause the house was afire. Then she falls to with tubs of boilin' hot soap-suds, until it fills your lungs, and drips off the ends of your nose and your fingers, and smells like goodness knows what."

"Jonathan!" Hepsey reproved.

"Are you exaggerating just the least bit?" echoed Betty.

"No ma'am, I'm not. Words can't begin to tell the tale when Mary gets the fever on. I thought I noticed symptoms of house-cleanin' last week. Mary was eyein' things round the house, and givin' me less and less to eat, and lookin' at me with that cold-storage stare of hers that means death or house-cleanin'."

"But, Mr. Jackson," Betty pleaded, "your house has to be cleaned sometimes, you know."

"Sure thing," Jonathan replied. "But there's altogether too much of this house-cleanin' business goin' on to suit me. I don't see any dirt anywheres."

"That's because you are a man," Hepsey retorted. "Men never see dirt until they have to take a shovel to it."

Jonathan sighed hopelessly. "What's the use of bein' a widower," he continued, "if you can't even have your own way in your own house, I'd just like to know? I have to eat odds and ends of cold victuals out here in the woodshed, or anywhere Mary McGuire happens to drop 'em."

"That's tough luck, Mr. Jackson. You just come over to dinner with Donald and me and have a square meal."

"I'd like to awful well, Mrs. Maxwell, but I dasn't: if I didn't camp out and eat her cold victuals she'd laid out for me, it'd spoil the pleasure of house-cleanin' for her. 'Taint as though it was done with when she's finished, neither. After it's all over, and things are set to rights, they're all wrong. Some shades won't roll up. Some won't roll down; why, I've undressed in the dark before now, since one of 'em suddenly started rollin' up on me before I'd got into bed, and scared the wits out of me. She'll be askin' me to let her give the furnace a sponge bath next. I believe she'd use tooth-powder on the inside of a boiled egg, if she only knew how. This house-cleanin'

racket is all dum nonsense, anyhow."

"Why Jonathan! Don't swear like that," Betty exclaimed laughing; "Mr.

Maxwell's coming."

"I said _d-u-m_, Mrs. Betty; I never say nothin' worse than that--'cept when I lose my temper," he added, safely, examining first the hone and then the edge of the scythe, as if intending to sharpen it.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "I AIN'T A CHICKEN NO MORE, MRS. BETTY, AND I'VE 'MOST FORGOT HOW TO DO A BIT OF COURTIN'"]

Hepsey had gone into the house to inspect for herself the thoroughness of Mary McGuire's operations; Betty thought the opportunity favorable for certain counsels.

"The trouble with you is you shouldn't be living alone, like this, Jonathan. You have all the disadvantages of a house, and none of the pleasures of a home."

"Yes," he responded, yawning, "it's true enough; but I 'aint a chicken no more, Mrs. Betty, and I've 'most forgot how to do a bit of courtin'. What with cleanin' up, and puttin' on your Sunday clothes, and goin' to the barber's, and gettin' a good ready, it's a considerable effort for an old man like me."

"People don't want to see your clothes; they want to see you. If you feel obliged to, you can send your Sunday clothes around some day and let her look at them once for all. Keeping young is largely a matter of looking after your digestion and getting plenty of sleep. Its all foolishness for you to talk about growing old. Why, you are in the prime of life."

"Hm! Yes. And why don't you tell me that I look real handsome, and that the girls are all crazy for me. You're an awful jollier, Mrs.

Betty, though I'll admit that a little jollyin' does me a powerful lot of good now and then. I sometimes like to believe things I know to a certainty 'aint true, if they make me feel good."

For a moment Betty kept silent, gazing into the kindly face, and then the instinct of match-making a.s.serted itself too strongly to be resisted.

"There's no sense in your being a lonesome widower. Why don't you get married? I mean it."

For a moment Jonathan was too astounded at the audacity of the serious suggestion to reply; but when he recovered his breath he exclaimed:

"Well, I swan to man! What will you ask me to be doin' next?"

"Oh, I mean it, all right," persisted Mrs. Betty. "Here you've got a nice home for a wife, and I tell you you need the happiness of a real home. You will live a whole lot longer if you have somebody to love and look after; and if you want to know what you will be asking me to do next, I will wager a box of candy it will be to come to your wedding."

"Make it cigars, Mrs. Betty; I'm not much on candy. Maybe you're up to tellin' me who'll have me. I haven't noticed any females makin'

advances towards me in some time now. The only woman I see every day is Mary McGuire, and she'd make a pan-cake griddle have the blues if she looked at it."

Mrs. Betty grasped her elbow with one hand, and putting the first finger of the other hand along the side of her little nose, whispered:

"What's the matter with Mrs. Burke?"

Jonathan deliberately pulled a hair from his small remaining crop and cut it with the scythe, as if he had not heard Betty's impertinent suggestion. But finally he replied:

"There's nothin' the matter with Mrs. Burke that I know of; but that's no reason why she should be wantin' to marry me."

"She thinks a great deal of you; I know she does."

"How do you know she does?"

"Well, I heard her say something very nice about you yesterday."

"Hm! Did you? What was it?"