It took me thirty years."
"You don't mean it!" he says. "Why, that wouldn't do."
"Assets take time," I says, "but you might get some prospects."
Then I fell to thinking how it could come about that Madge McCulloch
might get into the habit of making tea for me, seeing I was too old
to marry her, besides her being spoken for. Then I thought she might
do it by keeping a hotel, and I says:
"Speaking of keeping hotels--"
"Who's speaking of it?"
"I am. I kept a hotel once."
"Seaside?" he says.
"No. Inland a bit."
"Summer hotel?"
"Aye, summer hotel. Always summer there."
"Why, she must have paid!"
"Aye, she paid. She was put up in New Bedford," I says, "and run in
South America."
"You don't mean it!"
"It's a good business if tended to," I says. "But you don't tend to
business, you don't. That's the trouble with you. That hotel fell
into the river more'n twenty years ago, and it ain't to the point,
but here Madge McCulloch's been jerking the window shade up and down
like she had something on her mind."
"It's a signal," he says, and with that he dropped off and
disappeared toward the back of the house. He left me on the fence.
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