When Hosea Hand, otherwise and generally Ho Ha, learned through a visit
from Lucius Brown that $12,000 had been left him by a cousin he was
astounded, happy, and perplexed. For some time he did nothing but treat
his friends and acquaintances. He bought Mermaid countless ice cream
sodas and Mr. Brown countless cigars, and various others a considerable
number of drinks (always taking a cigar himself). Occasionally he
got confused in his happiness, as when he asked Mermaid to have a
cigar and Lawyer Brown whether he wanted lemon or orange phosphate.
His perplexity arose over the cousin whose beneficiary he had so
unexpectedly become. Mr. Brown seemed unable to make this end of the
wonder suitably clear.
“A fourth or fifth cousin, Hosea,” said the lawyer, carelessly, over
the substitute for the phosphate. “She--he--they--I mean, it--was
someone you never knew. She--they--had a lot of money. Remembered all
the relatives.”
“Well, father and mother both came of large families,” observed Ho
Ha. “I must have had a couple dozen cousins. I can’t remember who was
fourth and who was fifth among ’em. I don’t know--would you think I
might show my appreciation by putting up a nice tombstone to this
cousin?”
“Good Lord, certainly not! I mean--I’m sure there will be a suitable
memorial,” replied Mr. Brown, slightly choking over the near-phosphate
as his mind imaged a tall shaft in honour of Keturah Smiley.
“What was the name?” asked Ho Ha.
“Ke----” began the lawyer, thoughtlessly, caught himself in time, and
changed the syllable to the similitude of a sneeze. “Ke-chew! Ke-chew!”
He sneezed again, as though an encore might confer verisimilitude. Ho
Ha did not appear to suspect the sneeze.
“I s’pose that cussed brother of mine got a share,” Ho Ha meditated
aloud. “The wonder is he didn’t get mine, too.”
Mermaid mixed her drinks recklessly, following a pineapple ice cream
soda with a raspberry. It was before the day of the more fanciful
concoctions or Mermaid would have had a week of sundaes.
“What are you going to do, Uncle Ho?” she inquired with the interest
that, from a young woman, is always so flattering to a man, even an
uncle.
“Oh, I guess I’ll build a little shack on the beach and put the rest in
the bank,” Ho Ha told her.
“I didn’t mean what are you going to do with the money, but what are
you going to do with yourself?”
Hosea twinkled. “P’raps I’ll marry,” he hinted. “Now if I was only a
young man----” He looked at her roguishly.
“It’s never too late to marry,” Mermaid said, between spoonfuls. “But
if you’re going to marry you won’t want a shack on the beach--or your
wife won’t, which amounts to the same thing.”
Ho Ha nodded repeatedly. “I don’t want to marry the first woman that
proposes to me,” he announced with his most sagacious air. “I might
advertise, eh?”
They strolled down the street together until they reached Keturah
Smiley’s. Mermaid commanded her uncle to enter. Keturah was making a
batch of cookies in the kitchen.
“Come in, Hosea,” she said, cordially. “Child, if Dickie Hand comes
here this evening, do for goodness’ sake make the boy eat yesterday’s
crullers so we can have a taste of these cookies ourselves. I declare,
Hosea, I don’t know what my own cake tastes like any longer.”
“I do,” said Ho Ha, looking at her attentively.
“Have one,” said Keturah, slightly flustered by the look he gave
her. Could he have learned anything? Ho Ha fell silent a moment, and
then after several mouthfuls said: “You were always a great hand for
relationships, Keturah. Can you tell me who this cousin was that’s left
me some money?”
Miss Smiley faced away from him and began energetically stowing her
batch in a cake box.
“I don’t know, Hosea,” she answered. “I never could keep track of your
relations.”
“I don’t believe this cousin was a relation,” said Ha Ha. “I never
heard of any relations except poor relations. Most likely this was some
conscience-stricken person, repenting of evil gains----”
“Nonsense!” exclaimed Miss Smiley with an emphasis and a touch of
indignation that seemed unnecessary. “She had as clear a conscience as
some others, I guess.”
“Oh, so ’twas a woman?” observed Ho Ha, innocently. “Well, now, that’s
funny. I can’t think of any _woman_----”
“I didn’t say ’twas a woman,” parried Keturah. “She or he or whoever it
was probably had more than she--he--knew what to do with. Left to the
next of kin. It’s a common thing.”
“Uncommon common,” agreed Ho Ha somewhat paradoxically. “Happens every
day. You read about it in the newspapers. I dare say she, he, or it got
the idea while lining the pantry shelves with ’em. What’s money for,
anyway, Keturah?”
“Money,” interjected Mermaid, “is to make those who haven’t it want it
and those who have it want more.”
“Money,” said Miss Smiley, sententiously, “is to hang on to until you
know when to let go.”
“Money,” Ho Ha framed his own definition, “is only to make some other
things more valuable.”
“You’re right, Uncle Ho,” Mermaid conceded. “If Dickie Hand’s
father--your brother--didn’t have as much money as he has, Dickie would
be worth almost nothing to me.”
“Child!” Keturah rebuked her.
“Oh, Aunt Keturah, I don’t mean that I value Dickie for his father’s
money,” explained Mermaid, impatiently, “but don’t you see if his
father were poor Dickie would be so--so _unmanageable_. I shouldn’t
be able to do a _thing_ with him! But his father’s rather rich, even
if he did lose a lot of money a while ago, and I can just make Dickie
behave himself by telling him that he can’t possibly get any credit for
what he makes of himself because there’s all that money to help him.
That makes Dickie simply wild, and he says he’ll be somebody in spite
of his father and his money. He gets almost desperate--which is quite
necessary,” she added, thoughtfully. “The other day he said, ‘Damn my
father’s money! I’ll show you it hasn’t anything to do with _me_!’ Of
course I gave him the--the dickens but I couldn’t help being rather
pleased.”
Miss Smiley regarded Mermaid with great sternness, but Ho Ha’s
shoulders seemed to move queerly. Finally he choked.
“If my cooking chokes you, Hosea, you’d better not eat it,” Keturah
said with considerable dignity.
“I beg your pardon, Keturah,” was the humble reply.
Mermaid had been eyeing the two as if a surprising notion had just
occurred to her. Now she slipped on a jacket and started to leave the
house, “I have to see Dickie,” she explained to Miss Smiley, “and
get him mad enough so he’ll study to-night and pass his chemistry
examination to-morrow.” She slipped out.
Left alone, the man and the woman said nothing for a while. Miss Smiley
found various supper preparations to occupy her. Ho Ha watched her with
the air of a person who wanted to say something but found it difficult
to choose the right words. At length, “Keturah,” he got out, “do you
remember a time when money made trouble between us?”
Miss Smiley did not answer him. She did not look at him.
“Of course you do,” Ho Ha resumed, undisturbed, apparently, by the
silence. “Now what I would like to know is whether the thing that made
us trouble can’t be made to mend it?”
Still she did not answer nor appear to heed him.
“I know very well,” said Ho Ha, as if to the furniture, and nodding
at the grandfather’s clock which stood at one end of the large living
room, “I know well that my fourth cousin or fifth cousin or whoever it
was that left me this money left it to me because it belonged to me.
I suspect Cousin What’s-the-Name _got_ the money because it belonged
to me, and got it from the person who owed it to me expressly to put
in my hands. I’m obliged to Cousin Who’s-This as much for trying to
do the right thing as for getting me the money. And I feel, somehow,
that Cousin You-Can-Guess-Whom thought less about the money than about
something else. A cousinly sort of a cousin, but real cousins don’t act
that way. Real cousins let each other fend for themselves. But, anyway,
that’s no matter, one way or t’other. The main thing is to set things
right. The money was only good to show something else that was worth
a good deal more than the money--and that was a good feeling. A--a
_strong_ and _enduring_ feeling,” emphasized Ho Ha. “A feeling that’s
there’s only one word for, and the word doesn’t express it. Keturah,”
he exclaimed, getting up and approaching the woman who kept her back so
persistently toward him, “you and I aren’t young any longer. We--we
were cheated out of something, or else we cheated ourselves out of
something, and it was a good deal. But, Keturah, it isn’t all gone. We
didn’t lose everything. We made a mistake, a terrible mistake, but it
was only a mistake; it wasn’t an ’ntentional wrong either of us did the
other. Keturah, can’t--can’t we just salvage some happiness out of the
wreckage?” He was standing close to her now.
Suddenly he put his arm awkwardly and eagerly about her. She had raised
her hands to her face, and as she took them away he could see she was
crying....
Out of doors, Mermaid, without any definite knowledge of what was going
on inside, strained her diplomacy to the utmost to keep young Mr. Hand
from entering the yard and passing the living-room windows and even,
like as not, entering in quest of food to sustain his strength until
supper. Dickie was a tall, thin, light-haired boy with a blond skin of
singular freshness and brown eyes of singular alterations. Just now
they showed a puzzled impatience with Mermaid’s whims.
“Will you go to the dance with me this evening?” he demanded.
Mermaid shook her head. “I want you to walk up street with me,” she
announced.
“But why?” interrogated the young man. “I’ve just come from there, and
you say you don’t want anything.”
“I want a serious talk with you,” corrected Mermaid. “How would you
prepare H^{2}SO^{4}, Dickie?”
“Hang chemistry!” ejaculated Mr. Hand. “Wait a moment till I get a
cookie.” He started into the yard. Mermaid made a short dash and
checked him.
“Nothing but yesterday’s crullers,” she stated.
“Well, a cruller, then,” grumbled Dickie.
Mermaid plucked at his sleeve.
“Dick Hand,” she informed him, “you must not go in that house, now.
Aunt Keturah has a--a caller.”
“Huh. I don’t suppose he’ll bite me.”
“Well, I will,” the exasperated young woman retorted. “I’ll not speak
to you or go to a party with you, if you don’t come along this minute!”
Then a purely feminine inspiration seized her. “Do as you like,” she
said, with excellent indifference, “I daresay I can get Guy Vanton or
Tommy----”
Leaving the sentence unfinished, she controlled herself with an
effort and half turned away. Dickie forgot the need of sustenance.
Intolerable feelings prompted the young man to fall in at her side.
Together they marched solemnly northward. Said Mr. Hand: “Say, Mermaid,
I--it--you----”
“They--we--him. Yes, Dickie?”
“You--don’t you think we might become engaged?”
“Why--I suppose we might, some day, Dickie.”
“To-day. I’m going on eighteen and you’re sixteen. Lots of people are
engaged for years--as long as three years. I’d be twenty-one and you
nineteen.”
“Yes, Dickie; when you’re twenty-one, I’ll be nineteen.”
“But, Mermaid, don’t you--don’t you _care_?”
“If it would help you pass that chemistry exam, I’d become engaged to
you right away, Dickie,” sighed Mermaid. “Of course I care. If you
flunk that you can’t enter technical school or anywhere else.”
“Oh, _damn_ the chemistry!” roared Mr. Hand. “Exam, Damn!”
“That’s a short poem; remarkable poem,” Mermaid commented with
some coldness. “Full of--full of emotion. Conforms to Wordsworth’s
definition of poetry, ‘emotion recollected in tranquillity.’ But you’re
not tranquil enough, Dickie. I don’t think I want to be engaged to any
one who swears regularly.”
“Beg your pardon, ’m sure,” Mr. Hand mumbled, sulkily. “I won’t say it
again. Go on, don’t mind me! Go on, go with Tommy. He’s almost twenty.
Or _Mister_ Vanton, who is twenty-two. _I’m_ only about eighteen.” He
pulled out a pack of cigarettes and said loftily: “If you don’t mind.”
Lifting his cap, he inclined his head and moved away.
Mermaid looked after him uneasily. Suddenly she called out, “Dickie!”
He returned, but with a certain effect of distant politeness.
“Come over after supper and I’ll quiz you on the chemistry best I can,”
she offered.
He relaxed somewhat. “All right,” he agreed, magnanimously. “I’ll walk
back with you,” he went on, as if uttering an after-thought.
Mermaid acquiesced. As they entered the yard they met Ho Ha coming out
of the house. He stopped, looking at them happily and mysteriously, and
propounded a riddle to Mermaid.
“If an uncle of yours,” he said, “were to marry your aunt, what
relation would that make your uncle’s nephew to your aunt’s niece?”
“Friends once removed,” said Mermaid. “Oh, Uncle Ho, I’m tickled to
death!”