t when it comes to new-fangled messes
done bad, so a man don't know what he's eating, whether it's cats or
poisonous mushrooms, I draw the line. Miss Hart's bread is more
generally saleratusy and heavy, but at least you know it's heavy
bread, and I got heavy stuff at the Joneses and didn't know what it
was. And Miss Hart's pies are tough, but you know you've got tough
pies, and at the Joneses' I had tough things that I couldn't give a
name to. Miss Hart's doughnuts are greasy, but Lord, the greasy
things at the Joneses' that Susy made! At least you know what you've
got when you eat a greasy doughnut, and if it hurts you you know what
to tell the doctor, but I had to give it up. I'd rather have bad
cooking and know what it is than bad cooking and know what it isn't.
Then there were other things. I like, when I get home from the store,
to have a little quiet and read my paper, and Susy and Fanny, if I
didn't stay in the parlor, were banging the piano and singing at me
all the time to get me down-stairs. So I've gone back to the hotel,
and I'm enough sight better off. Of course, when that matter of Miss
Farrel came up I left. A man don't want to think he may get a little
arsenic mixed in with the bad cooking, but now I'm convinced that's
all right."

"How do you know?" asked Henry, paying for the peppermints. "I never
thought Miss Hart had anything to do with it myself, but of course
she wasn't exactly acquitted, neither she nor the girl. You said
yourself that she bought arsenic here."

"So she did, and it all went to kill rats," said Albion. "Lots of
folks have bought arsenic here to kill rats with. They didn't all of
them poison Miss Farrel." Albion nodded wisely and mysteriously. "No,
Lucinda's all right," he said. "I ain't at liberty to say how I know,
but I do know. I may get bad cooking at the hotel, but I won't get no
arsenic."

Henry looked curiously at the other man. "So you've found out
something?" he said.

"I ain't at liberty to say," replied Albion. "It's a pretty nice day,
ain't it? Hope we ain't going to have such a hot summer as last,
though hot weather is mighty good for my business, since I put in the
soda-fountain."

Henry, walking homeward with his package of peppermints, speculated a
little on what Albion Bennet had said; then his mind reverted to his
anxiety with regard to Sylvia, and her discovery that he had returned
to the shop. He passed his arm across his face and sniffed at his
coat-sle