A NEW BROOM SWEEPS CLEAN
Being an innately honest person it went sorely against the grain with
Josie to pry into anybody's private mail, even though he be an
arch-villain who was doing his best to keep two poor little children
out of their heritage.
"He is so handsome I don't see how he can be really wicked," she mused
as she endeavored to get order out of the chaos that reigned in the
kitchen. Josie had determined to clean up in the kitchen and pantry
first and then proceed to the other corners of the house. The
succession of incompetent servants that had been employed by the
present master of the old Waller house had left layers of dirt and
grease, each according to to her lights. Josie was bent upon getting to
the bottom of dirt as well as the mystery of what Chester Hunt was up
to.
"The better I do my work the more he will trust me. I do so hate to
steam open his mail," she wailed as there came a sharp ring and a thud
of falling letters through the slot in the front door.
If Chester Hunt could have peeped in on the new servant and had seen
her deftly sorting his mail, putting aside the advertisements and
invitations, carefully pocketing an official-looking envelope
postmarked from somewhere in Indiana and another sloppily written
envelope from Chicago, perhaps he would have changed his mind about her
lack of brains. The scouring of the kitchen must wait for a few moments
while the new maid-of-all-work held these two letters over the steaming
kettle just long enough to loosen the flaps, which she rolled back
neatly and carefully.
The official-looking letter was from a sanitarium in Indiana. This
Josie devoured greedily. It was merely a report from the physician in
charge concerning one of his patients. That patient was Mrs. Waller.
The letter stated that the lady was quite normal except for the fact
that she refused to believe her husband was dead. She spent much time
writing to her children and trying to devise means of getting the
letters mailed to them. She was evidently a far from meek patient and
was giving the attendants a good deal of trouble. The owner of the
sanitarium was willing to keep the lady longer if Chester Hunt, the
person in authority, decided she must stay. The rate would be
increased, however, as it was much more trouble to look after a normal
person than one more or less demented.
The letter was a cold, businesslike one. There was something in it,
read between the lines, that made Josie shudder. She no longer had any
qualms about having steamed open Chester Hunt's mail. She made a quick
copy of the letter in the cryptic characters taught her by her father,
carefully noting the address and date. She then sealed the letter
neatly and turned to the communication from Chicago.
As she had divined, it was from the faithless Dink. It was full of
reproaches to her darling Ches for not writing oftener and of demands
for funds. "These tiresome children are so extravagant," she wrote.
"And now Polly has been ill with a throat that looked as though it
might be diphtheria and I have had to have a doctor in. We have been in
Chicago for the last week and I think I may just stay here. We have
board in an excellent place, but of course it is expensive. Don't be
such a tight wad, Ches. You know I am looking after these brats
entirely on your account. If it wasn't for you I'd lose them fast
enough. What do you expect me to do next? Whatever you want me to do,
give me time to do it in." She ended with assurances of truest
affection.
"So," mused Josie, "lying to each other, too! Chester Hunt thinks the
kids are with Dink. He doesn't know how cheaply she has boarded them
either. Not even honor among thieves! The plot thickens! Wheels within
wheels! As father used to say:
"'Oh, what a tangled web we weave
When once we practice to deceive.'"
One thing that always amused Josie's friends was that she constantly
quoted old saws and attributed them to her beloved father. According to
Josie, Detective O'Gorman was the originator of half of "Poor Richard's
Almanac" and the "Wisdom of Solomon" and many terse sayings of
Shakespeare.
After Josie had copied the contents of the two important communications
she sealed them neatly and placed them with the rest of the mail on the
master's desk, carefully mixing the letters so that the two which had
been tampered with did not lie together. After that she redoubled her
efforts towards cleaning the kitchen. Into every crack and corner went
Josie's broom and scrubbing brush. She rescued the clothes from the
line in the back yard, and then ironed them and, folding them in a
highly professional manner, placed them on the foot of Chester Hunt's
bed,
"It is bad enough to have to spy on a man but at least I intend to earn
my twelve a week or whatever it was I told him I asked."
Her cleaning mania then led her to the dining room, where such another
upheaval occurred as seldom takes place in a mistressless home.
"Poor man! He has certainly lived in extreme discomfort." She found
herself pitying Chester Hunt, but just then in the raid she was making
on the shelves of the Sheraton sideboard she found two porridge bowls,
one decorated with chickens and one with rabbits, which brought Polly
and Peter back so vividly that her incipient pity was turned to rage.
After that she wielded her brush and broom with pitiless fury. She
rubbed the mahogany with the expression of one who might have been
rubbing salt into the wounds of a bitter enemy.
"Thank goodness he doesn't expect to come home to luncheon today," she
said to herself. "Those porridge bowls get my goat to that extent that
my foot might slip again and I'd drop something worse than pepper on
his food."
Josie had reckoned without her host, as the saying goes. Chester Hunt
did come home to luncheon. She had just put the finishing touch on the
sideboard, having rubbed the massive old silver and scrubbed the
beautiful Wedgwood pitchers so that the former shone with some of its
pristine glory and the latter's little fat cupids and heavy garlands of
roses stood out from their lavender background as they had not done for
a year or more. She had taken down the dusty lace curtains and washed
the dingy windows. The room was no longer dark and gloomy. The sun did
not have to find its way through grime but came joyfully through the
shiny windows and glinted on silver and polished mahogany.
"Now that's something like!" Josie exclaimed, stepping back to view her
handiwork.
"So it is."
Josie prided herself on being steeled against surprise of any sort but
this voice breaking in on her monologue was almost too much for her.
Her heart lost a beat, but her habit of self-control was uppermost and
she was able to turn on Chester Hunt her imperturbable countenance
unlit by intelligence, her eyes dull and unseeing.
"You bane having dirty blacks for help," she ventured. "Is it lunch you
bane come for?"
"I'm ill, Miss Josie Larson," he said with a whimsical look on his
face, that Josie now noticed was drawn and white. "It's that devilish
lumbago that has got me. I hope I did not startle you."
"Yah! I bane hearin ghosts all morning," Josie declared stoutly. "When
I was scroobing the sideboard shelves and picked up two little porridge
bowls, one with rabbits and one with chickens, I thought I heard the
chickens crowing and the rabbits didn't make a sound but I thought I
saw their mouths wiggling."
"Oh!" said the man, his expression changing, "strange ghosts to be
fearing!"
"I don't bane afraid. I don't bane afraid of anything."
"Well, that's good! Any mail? I'll have to get to bed and I'll ask you
to bring me tip a tray of food. Something quite simple, tea and toast
or anything you can think of. This lumbago hits me every now and then."
"Where do you have lumbago?" asked Josie. "Is it in your face or your
stomach?"
"Back, f----! Back!"
Josie realized her master had almost called her a fool and felt the
compliment highly. "The bigger fool he thinks I am the better I am
attending to my business," she thought.
"I bane sorry. Don't you want me to iron your back, sir? In my country
we iron backs. I can iron very well, sir. You will see your laundry on
your bed. I have ironed it so well I feel sure you could trust your
back to me. I did not put your wash away, fearing you might think I
bane meddlin."
"Oh, that's all right, my girl. I fancy what meddling you do will make
no difference to me. Just don't get my papers mixed up."
"Sure, I bane careful with all such things. Your letters are on your
desk."
"Well, bring them up to me when you bring my tea and toast. They will
keep until then. I must get to bed." He walked with his back bent.
Evidently every movement was painful.
"I'll feel sorry for him again if I don't look out," muttered Josie. "I
think I'll keep these porridge bowls where I can look at them to keep
myself from weakening. Polly, you stay there," she said, putting the
rabbits behind a big silver pitcher. "And Peter, you can hide behind
this fruit bowl. Don't crow too loud, little chickens, but just loud
enough to keep me from being too sorry for that handsome wretch
upstairs, with his noble brow and the lumbago in his back."
Josie arranged a tray for the sick man deftly and neatly. To the toast
and tea she added a fluffy omelette and, with the letters carefully
tucked in by the teapot, she tripped up to the master's room. He had
piled the beautifully ironed shirts on a chair and was in bed, groaning
from the extra exertion of undressing.
"Try to eat, sir," she said gently. "I bane cuked you something nice."
He did eat and felt refreshed. Josie noticed he looked over his mail
and evidently took especial interest in the two letters that had also
claimed her attention. He put them aside and told her she could remove
the others, he would look at them later on. Slipping back into the room
for the tray, Josie caught the master with his mask off, as it were. He
held in his hand the two opened letters. On his countenance was an
expression of mingled cunning and cold calculation.
"I'll trouble you to hand me my fountain pen," he said to the girl.
"There is a portfolio of stationery on the table over there. In about
an hour you may come up and get some letters I want you to mail for me.
Do you know where the postoffice is?"
"Yah, I bane there for my mail which come to a window."
"Well, take my letters all the way to the post-office. You understand."
"Yah, I ain't bane no fool."
"Oh, excuse me," he said cynically. "Anyhow, you bane a very good cook
and from my shirts I judge you are a very fine laundress, so when you
get my letters safely deposited in the postoffice I will ask you to
come up and try your hand on my back."
"All right, sir, I bane willing."
Josie permitted herself another grin and a gay pirouette in the lower
hall.
"I only wish I knew some Swedish talk besides 'bane'," she said to
herself. "I am not at all sure scroobing isn't Irish and cuke for cook
might be any old language. The poor man has got an awful backache,
Josie O'Gorman, and you ought to feel sorry for him."