JIM BENNET had never married. He had passed middle life, and possessed considerable property. Susan Adkins kept house for him. She was a widow and a very distant relative. Jim had two nieces, his brother's daughters. One, Alma Beecher, was married; the other, Amanda, was not.
The nieces had naively grasping views concerning their uncle and his property. They stated freely that they considered him unable to care for it; that a guardian should be appointed and the property be theirs at once. They consulted Lawyer Thomas Hopkinson with regard to it; they discoursed at length upon what they claimed to be an idiosyn-crasy of Jim's, denoting failing mental powers.
"He keeps a perfect slew of cats, and has a coal fire for them in the woodshed all winter," said Amanda.
"Why in thunder shouldn't he keep a fire in the woodshed if he wants to?" demanded Hopkinson.
"I know of no law against it. And there isn't a law in the country regulating the number of cats a man can keep." Thomas Hopkinson, who was an old friend of Jim's, gave his prominent chin an up-ward jerk as he sat in his office arm-chair before his clients.
"There is something besides cats," said Alma "What?""He talks to himself."
"What in creation do you expect the poor man to do? He can't talk to Susan Adkins about a blessed thing except tidies and pincushions. That woman hasn't a thought in her mind outside her soul's salvation and fancy-work. Jim has to talk once in a while to keep himself a man. What if he does talk to himself? I talk to myself. Next thing you will want to be appointed guardian over me, Amanda."Hopkinson was a bachelor, and Amanda flushed angrily.
"He wasn't what I call even gentlemanly," she told Alma, when the two were on their way home.
"I suppose Tom Hopkinson thought you were setting your cap at him," retorted Alma. She rel-ished the dignity of her married state, and enjoyed giving her spinster sister little claws when occasion called. However, Amanda had a temper of her own, and she could claw back.
"YOU needn't talk," said she. "You only took Joe Beecher when you had given up getting anybody better. You wanted Tom Hopkinson yourself. Ihaven't forgotten that blue silk dress you got and wore to meeting. You needn't talk. You know you got that dress just to make Tom look at you, and he didn't. You needn't talk.""I wouldn't have married Tom Hopkinson if he had been the only man on the face of the earth,"declared Alma with dignity; but she colored hotly.
Amanda sniffed. "Well, as near as I can find out Uncle Jim can go on talking to himself and keeping cats, and we can't do anything," said she.
When the two women were home, they told Alma's husband, Joe Beecher, about their lack of success.
They were quite heated with their walk and excite-ment. "I call it a shame," said Alma. "Anybody knows that poor Uncle Jim would be better off with a guardian.""Of course," said Amanda. "What man that had a grain of horse sense would do such a crazy thing as to keep a coal fire in a woodshed?""For such a slew of cats, too," said Alma, nodding fiercely.
Alma's husband, Joe Beecher, spoke timidly and undecidedly in the defense. "You know," he said, "that Mrs. Adkins wouldn't have those cats in the house, and cats mostly like to sit round where it's warm."His wife regarded him. Her nose wrinkled. "Isuppose next thing YOU'LL be wanting to have a cat round where it's warm, right under my feet, with all I have to do," said she. Her voice had an actual acidity of sound.
Joe gasped. He was a large man with a constant expression of wondering inquiry. It was the expres-sion of his babyhood; he had never lost it, and it was an expression which revealed truly the state of his mind. Always had Joe Beecher wondered, first of all at finding himself in the world at all, then at the various happenings of existence. He probably wondered more about the fact of his marriage with Alma Bennet than anything else, although he never betrayed his wonder. He was always painfully anxious to please his wife, of whom he stood in awe. Now he hastened to reply: "Why, no, Alma;of course I won't."
"Because," said Alma, "I haven't come to my time of life, through all the trials I've had, to be taking any chances of breaking my bones over any miserable, furry, four-footed animal that wouldn't catch a mouse if one run right under her nose.""I don't want any cat," repeated Joe, miserably.
His fear and awe of the two women increased.
When his sister-in-law turned upon him he fairly cringed.
"Cats!" said Amanda. Then she sniffed. The sniff was worse than speech.
Joe repeated in a mumble that he didn't want any cats, and went out, closing the door softly after him, as he had been taught. However, he was en-tirely sure, in the depths of his subjugated masculine mind, that his wife and her sister had no legal au-thority whatever to interfere with their uncle's right to keep a hundred coal fires in his woodshed, for a thousand cats. He always had an inner sense of glee when he heard the two women talk over the matter. Once Amanda had declared that she did not believe that Tom Hopkinson knew much about law, anyway.
"He seems to stand pretty high," Joe ventured with the utmost mildness.
"Yes, he does," admitted Alma, grudgingly.
"It does not follow he knows law," persisted Amanda, "and it MAY follow that he likes cats.
There was that great Maltese tommy brushing round all the time we were in his office, but I didn't dare shoo him off for fear it might be against the law."Amanda laughed, a very disagreeable little laugh.
Joe said nothing, but inwardly he chuckled. It was the cause of man with man. He realized a great, even affectionate, understanding of Jim.
The day after his nieces had visited the lawyer's office, Jim was preparing to call on his friend Edward Hayward, the minister. Before leaving he looked carefully after the fire in the woodshed. The stove was large. Jim piled on the coal, regardless out-wardly that the housekeeper, Susan Adkins, had slammed the kitchen door to indicate her contempt.
