But do ye _know_ them?"
"Why, certainly not," I replied.
"Well--that was all I wuz askin' ye. Ye see, when _he_ come here to
take the rooms--you wasn't here then--he told my wife that he lived at
number thirty-four in his street. An' yistiddy _she_ told her that
they lived at number thirty-five. He said he lived in an
apartment-house. Now there can't be no apartment-house on two sides of
the same street, kin they?"
"What street was it?" I inquired, wearily.
"Hundred 'n' twenty-first street."
"May be," I replied, still more wearily. "That's Harlem. Nobody knows
what people will do in Harlem."
I went up to my wife's room.
"Don't you think it's queer?" she asked me.
"I think I'll have a talk with that young man to-night," I said, "and
see if he can give some account of himself."
"But, my dear," my wife said, gravely, "_she_ doesn't know whether
they've had the measles or not."
"Why, Great Scott!" I exclaimed, "they must have had them when they
were children."
"Please don't be stupid," said my wife. "I meant _their_ children."
After dinner that night--or rather, after supper, for we had dinner in
the middle of the day at Jacobus's--I walked down the long verandah to
ask Brede, who was placidly smoking at the other end, to accompany me
on a twilight stroll.
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