whereupon the housemaid cloaked herself afresh with mystery and
"suspicioned" that she could tell things if she were one of those
odious persons who carried tales, which of course she was not.

Blowing and sipping with the calm which is the handmaiden of true
elegance, the laundress conceded both propositions, and edged forward
the suggestion that tale-bearing and confidence between intimates were
horses of dissimilar color. This was readily admitted by the housemaid
with its corollary that anything intrusted in confidence to the bosom
of the laundress was as good as locked in the mute confines of the
tomb. With these time-honored preliminaries the crisis above stairs as
seen from below stairs was promptly bared to the scalpel.

"Whin he come home lasht night He was here," the housemaid imparted in
a whisper.

The laundress hurdled the ambiguous pronouns like a thoroughbred.

"Is it th' trut' ye're tellin' me?" she demanded, forgetting her
graces, and grounding her saucer with a clatter.

"Cross me hear-rt," said the housemaid, enjoying her sensation.

"Ye'll excuse me intherruptin'--"

"Ye're no intherruptin'. 'Tis th' ind iv th' shtory."

"But phat did th' good ma-an say?"

As the faithful soul did not know, she remarked that there were some
things which a lady in her delicate position could not confide even to
a bosom friend. She hinted, however, that in the light of what she had
told the laundress a week ago of the family jar occasioned by Her
meeting Him in New York, the present state of things was easy to
conjecture.

But the laundress thirsted for details.

"Was his dayparture suddin like?" she asked.

Feeling that the force of her narrative might suffer from the admission
that she had only entered the house by a side door after she had met
Him walking rapidly away from the front, the housemaid answered merely
by moving sighs. The laundress reasoned from past experience that the
font had gone dry, and suddenly remembered that she was promised to
help with the Bowers's heavy ironing. This was at a quarter before
nine o'clock.

At ten minutes past nine o'clock the laundress remarked across the
ironing-board to Mrs. Bowers that if she were one of those odious
persons who carried tales, which of course she was not, she could
expose the carryings-on of somebody living not a hundred miles away to
a tune which would bring the blush to New Babylon's outraged cheek.
Mrs. Bowers made haste to answer t