He undoubtedly was
what her mother called "a queer dick," but also "a pippin with a perfect
core," which was her way of saying that he was a man to be trusted with
herself and with her daughter; one who would stand loyally by a friend or
a woman. He had stood by them both when Augustus Burlingame, the lawyer,
who had boarded with them when J. G. Kerry first came, coarsely exceeded
the bounds of liberal friendliness which marked the household, and by
furtive attempts at intimacy began to make life impossible for both
mother and daughter. Burlingame took it into his head, when he received
notice that his rooms were needed for another boarder, that J. G. Kerry
was the cause of it. Perhaps this was not without reason, since Kerry
had seen Kitty Tynan angrily unclasping Burlingame's arm from around her
waist, and had used cutting and decisive words to the sensualist
afterwards.
There had taken the place of Augustus Burlingame a land-agent--Jesse
Bulrush--who came and went like a catapult, now in domicile for three
days together, now gone for three weeks; a voluble, gaseous, humorous
fellow, who covered up a well of commercial evasiveness, honesty and
adroitness by a perspiring gaiety natural in its origin and convenient
for harmless deceit. He was fifty, and no gallant save in words; and,
as a wary bachelor of many years' standing, it was a long time before he
showed a tendency to blandish a good-looking middle-aged nurse named Egan
who also lodged with Mrs.
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