reached the chef, and amused him as a
piece of the Boss's luck. He was smoking his evening pipe at the kitchen
door after supper, when Clementina passed him on one of the many errands
that took her between Mrs. Milray's room and her own, and he called to
her: "Boss, what's this I hear about a pair o' glass slippas droppin'
out the sky int' youa lap?"

Clementina was so happy that she thought she might trust him for once,
and she said, "Oh, yes, Mr. Mahtin! Who do you suppose sent them?" she
entreated him so sweetly that it would have softened any heart but the
heart of a tease.

"I believe I could give a pootty good guess if I had the facts."

Clementina innocently gave them to him, and he listened with a
well-affected sympathy.

"Say Fane fust told you about 'em?"

"Yes. 'He'e's a package for you,' he said. Just that way; and he
couldn't tell me who left it, or anything."

"Anybody asked him about it since?"

"Oh, yes! Mrs. Milray, and Mrs. Atwell, and Mr. Atwell, and everybody."

"Everybody." The chef smiled with a peculiar droop of one eye. "And he
didn't know when the slippas got into the landlo'd's box?"

"No. The fust thing he knew, the' they we'e!" Clementina stood
expectant, but the chef smoked on as if that were all there was to say,
and seemed to have forgotten her. "Who do you think put them thea, Mr.
Mahtin?"

The chef looked up as if surprised to find her still there. "Oh! Oh,
yes! Who d' I think? Why, I know, Boss. But I don't believe I'd betta
tell you."

"Oh, do, Mr. Mahtin! If you knew how I felt about it--"

"No, no! I guess I betta not. 'Twouldn't do you any good. I guess I
won't say anything moa. But if I was in youa place, and I really wanted
to know whe'e them slippas come from--"

"I do--I do indeed--"

The chef paused before he added, "I should go at Fane. I guess what he
don't know ain't wo'th knowin', and I guess nobody else knows anything.
Thea! I don't know but I said mo'n I ought, now."

What the chef said was of a piece with what had been more than once in
Clementina's mind; but she had driven it out, not because it might not
be true, but because she would not have it true. Her head drooped;
she turned limp and springless away. Even the heart of the tease was
touched; he had not known that it would worry her so much, though he
knew that she disliked the clerk.

"Mind," he called after her, too late, "I ain't got no proof 't he done
it."

She did not answer him, or loo