Well,
let her think she will, if 'twill please her. But when it comes to
the settlement, call on me. Give her any reason you want to; say
a--er--wealthy friend of the family come to life all at once and
couldn't sleep nights unless he paid the costs."
"But there isn't any such friend, is there, Captain Warren? Other than
yourself, I mean?"
Captain Elisha grinned in appreciation of a private joke. "There is
somebody else," he admitted, "who'll pay a share, anyhow. I don't
know's he's what you call a bosom friend, and, as for his sleepin'
nights--well, I never heard he couldn't do that, after he went to bed.
But, anyhow, you saw wood, or bones, or whatever you have to do, and
leave the rest to me. And don't tell Caroline or anybody else a word."
The Moriartys lived in a four-room flat on the East Side, uptown, and
his visits there gave the captain a glimpse of another sort of New
York life, as different from that of Central Park West as could well be
imagined. The old man, Patrick, his wife, Margaret, the unmarried son,
Dennis, who worked in the gas house, and five other children of various
ages were hived somehow in those four small rooms and Captain Elisha
marveled greatly thereat.
"For the land sakes, ma'am," he asked of the nurse, "how do they do it?
Where do they put 'em nights? That--that closet in there's the pantry
and woodshed and kitchen and dinin' room; and that one's the settin'
room and parlor; and them two dry-goods boxes with doors to 'em are
bedrooms.
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