"What am I to pay the author of Peter and the pies?" I asked. "Well, seein's how you keep Peter, as it were, and Mrs. Pillig calc'lates she can rent her house up to Slab City, she's goin' to come to you for $20 a month. She's wuth it, too. You'll have the best kept and cleanest house in Bentford." I rose from the table solemnly. "Mrs. Temple," said I, "I accept Mrs. Pillig, Peter, and the pies at these terms, but only on one condition: _She is never to clean my study!_" "Why?" asked Mrs. Temple. "Because," said I, "you can never tell where an orderly woman will put things." Bert chuckled as he filled his pipe. Mrs. Temple grinned herself. I was about to make a triumphant exit, when these words from Mrs. Temple's lips arrested me: "Bert," she said, "did you clean the buggy to-day? You know you gotter go over ter the deepot to-morrow an' git that boarder." "That _what?_" I cried. Mrs. Bert's eyes half closed with a purely feminine delight. "Oh, ain't I told you?" she said innocently. "We're goin' ter hev another boarder, a young lady. From Noo York, too. Her health's broke down, she says, only that's not the way she said it, and somehow she heard of us. We ain't never taken many boarders, but I guess our name's in that old railroad advertisin' book. I wouldn't hev took her, only I thought maybe you wuz kind o' lonesome here with jest us." "Mrs. Temple," said I, "your solicitude quite overwhelms me. Comfort me with petticoats! Good Lord! And an anæmic, too! I'll bet she has nerves! When can Mrs. Pillig come to me, woman?" Mrs. Bert's eyes closed still farther. "Oh, your house ain't near ready yet," she said. "Why, the painters ain't even began." I fled to my chamber, and hauled forth a manuscript. A female boarder! No doubt she'd expect me to shave every day and change my working clothes for the noonday dinner! Heavens! probably she'd come down and advise me how to lay out my garden! So far, I had been blissfully free from advice. I had gone to the village just once--to open my account at the bank. I had not met a soul in the town. One or two of the early arrivals on the estates had driven by in their cars and stared curiously, but I had ignored them. I didn't want advice. I was having fun in my own way. "Hang Mrs. Temple!" I muttered, reading a whole paragraph of manuscript without taking in a word of it. In fact, I gave up all attempt to work, and crossly and wearily went to bed, where I lay on one of my strained shoulders and dreamed that a sick female with spectacles was hauling at my arm and begging me to come and rescue her sciatic nerve, which had fallen into my not-yet-built garden pool and was being swallowed by a gold fish. Chapter VI THE HERMIT SINGS AT TWILIGHT The next morning I demanded that Mrs. Temple again put me up some lunch. "For," said I, "I'm going to postpone meeting this broken-down wreck of a perhaps once proud female as long as possible."