“Two dollars,” he said in reply to my
question. “I don’t charge full rates,
because, bringin’ ’em up all summer as
I do, it pays to make a special price. When
they got off the train, I sez, sez I, `There’s
another bunch for Sunnyside, cook, parlor maid and
all.’ Yes’m—six summers,
and a new lot never less than once a month.
They won’t stand for the country and the lonesomeness,
I reckon.”
But with the presence of the “bunch” of
servants my courage revived, and late in the afternoon
came a message from Gertrude that she and Halsey would
arrive that night at about eleven o’clock, coming
in the car from Richfield. Things were looking
up; and when Beulah, my cat, a most intelligent animal,
found some early catnip on a bank near the house and
rolled in it in a feline ecstasy, I decided that getting
back to nature was the thing to do.
While I was dressing for dinner, Liddy rapped at the
door. She was hardly herself yet, but privately
I think she was worrying about the broken mirror and
its augury, more than anything else. When she
came in she was holding something in her hand, and
she laid it on the dressing-table carefully.
“I found it in the linen hamper,” she
said. “It must be Mr. Halsey’s,
but it seems queer how it got there.”
It was the half of a link cuff-button of unique design,
and I looked at it carefully.
“Where was it? In the bottom of the hamper?”
I asked.
“On the very top,” she replied.
“It’s a mercy it didn’t fall out
on the way.”
When Liddy had gone I examined the fragment attentively.
I had never seen it before, and I was certain it
was not Halsey’s. It was of Italian workmanship,
and consisted of a mother-of-pearl foundation, encrusted
with tiny seed-pearls, strung on horsehair to hold
them. In the center was a small ruby. The
trinket was odd enough, but not intrinsically of great
value. Its interest for me lay in this:
Liddy had found it lying in the top of the hamper
which had blocked the east-wing stairs.
That afternoon the Armstrongs’ housekeeper,
a youngish good-looking woman, applied for Mrs. Ralston’s
place, and I was glad enough to take her. She
looked as though she might be equal to a dozen of
Liddy, with her snapping black eyes and heavy jaw.
Her name was Anne Watson, and I dined that evening
for the first time in three days.
MR. JOHN BAILEY APPEARS
I had dinner served in the breakfast-room. Somehow
the huge dining-room depressed me, and Thomas, cheerful
enough all day, allowed his spirits to go down with
the sun. He had a habit of watching the corners
of the room, left shadowy by the candles on the table,
and altogether it was not a festive meal.
Dinner over I went into the living-room. I had
three hours before the children could possibly arrive,
and I got out my knitting. I had brought along
two dozen pairs of slipper soles in assorted sizes—I
always send knitted slippers to the Old Ladies’
Home at Christmas—and now I sorted over
the wools with a grim determination not to think about
the night before. But my mind was not on my
work: at the end of a half-hour I found I had
put a row of blue scallops on Eliza Klinefelter’s
lavender slippers, and I put them away.
