However, this mishap did not wholly abate Adah's interest in our affairs. In answer to Adah's solicitation a long letter had come from Maria, bearing the blissful promise that a carefully made plan of Maria's house of St. Joe (drawn by Maria herself upon a fly leaf excerpted from Maria's favorite volume, "The Life of Mary Lyon") would soon be forwarded for our enlightenment and delectation. Maria felt kindly toward us, and her sympathies had been awakened to their very depths by a tender souvenir Adah had sent her--a leaf plucked from one of the lilac bushes on the old Schmittheimer place. Both Adah and Maria belong to that old-school class of proper feminine folk who never pick but always pluck flowers.
Well, Adah and the neighbors kept as busy as a bee in a bottle planning changes that they deemed necessary in our house. When we got through with that dilly-dallying, shilly-shallying Lawyer Meisterbaum, Alice and I found out that Adah and the neighbors had left little for us to do except to approve their plans and pay for the execution thereof.
There had been a kind of tacit understanding all along that such changes as we made in the Schmittheimer house should be superintended by an architect-carpenter who was cordially recommended by Mrs. Denslow. This important person's name was Silas Plum, and he had a shop in Osgood Avenue, opposite one of our most fashionable and most prosperous cemeteries. Mrs. Denslow always called him Uncle Si, and this circumstance rather prejudiced me in favor of him. The facts, too, that Uncle Si was not overcrowded with business, that he was considerate in his charges, and that he was of so great versatility that he could boss the plumbing as well as the carpentering--these facts confirmed us in the opinion that Uncle Si was just the man for our needs.
I went with Mrs. Denslow to call upon this gifted and honest son of toil. His modest place of business was indicated to the passer-by by this insinuating sign:
SILAS PLUM, CARPENTER & BUILDER. COFFIN BOXES A SPECIALITY.
I am not a superstitious person. I think I have already told you so. Still I have instincts and intuitions; and you, who are not wholly dead to the subtle influences of the more delicate sentiments, will probably sympathize with me when I admit that Mr. Plum's sign did not inspire me with that enthusiasm which is at least comforting to the possessor. The reference to Mr. Plum's "speciality" was what cast a temporary gloom over me, but Mrs. Denslow was not one of those who suffer a detail so insignificant as this to stand in her way; so I was bounced into Uncle Si's shop and presented to Uncle Si in propria persona.