s hiding some dreadful secret!"

But Mrs. Pinckney only smiles in that calm, placid way of hers. You know
how easy she took things when she was Miss Geraldine and Pinckney found
her on the steamer in charge of the twins that had been willed to him?
Well, she ain't changed a bit; and, with Pinckney such a brilliant member
of the Don't Worry Fraternity, whatever frettin' goes on in that house
has to be done by volunteers.

Aunt Martha acts like she was wise to this; for she starts right in to
make up for lost opportunities, and when she spots this freaky lookin'
governess she immediately begins scoutin' for trouble. Suspicions? She
delivers a fresh lot after every meal!

"Humph!" says she. "Madame Roulaire, indeed! Well, I must say, she looks
as little like a Frenchwoman as any person I ever saw! How long have you
had her, Geraldine? What, only two months? Did she bring written
references, and did you investigate them carefully?"

She wouldn't let up, either, until she'd been assured that Madame
Roulaire had come from service in an English fam'ly, and that they'd
written on crested notepaper indorsin' her in every point, giving her
whole hist'ry from childhood up.

"But she hasn't the slightest French accent," insists Aunt Martha.

"I know," says Mrs. Pinckney. "She lived in England from the time she was
sixteen, and of course twenty years away from one's----"

"Does she claim to be only thirty-six?" exclaims Aunt Martha. "Why, she's
fifty if she's a day! Besides, I don't like that snaky way she has of
watching everyone."

There was no denyin', either, that this Roulaire party did have a pair of
shifty eyes in her head. I'd noticed that much myself in the few times
I'd seen her. They wa'n't any particular color you could name,--sort of a
greeny gray-blue,--but they sure was bright and restless. You'd never
hear a sound out of her, for she didn't let go of any remarks that wa'n't
dragged from her; but somehow you felt, from the minute you got into the
room until she'd made a gumshoe exit by the nearest door, that them
sleuthy lamps never quite lost sight of you.

That and her smile was the main points about her. I've seen a lot of
diff'rent kinds of smiles, meanin' and unmeanin'; but this chronic
half-smirk of Madame Roulaire's was about the most unconvincin'
performance I've ever watched. Why, even a blind man could tell she
didn't really mean it! Outside of that, she was just a plain, pie faced
sort of female w