JOSIE JUMPS HER JOB
In less than an hour Josie was summoned to her master's bedside. "The
letters are written, and a hard job it was, too, with this infernal
lumbago getting me if I so much as lift a finger. Get them in the
postoffice as soon as you can, my good girl. Don't stop for a thing."
"I bane have to stop to dress myself," said Josie. "Girls in service
don't like to go by the street in uniform."
"Well, if you must you must, but don't stop to doll up," he commanded,
"and be quick about it."
"Sure!" Josie smiled to think how quick she would be.
Again the tea kettle must play its part. First she opened the letter
addressed to Miss D. Dingus. There was a check for a good sum enclosed.
The letter was evidently written by a man with lumbago. The tone was
impatient and critical, although he seemed to remember his manners
before he finished and dropped a few endearing terms such as "darling
Dink," "My own girl," "I am thinking of you constantly," etc. He begged
her to be patient and put up with the annoyance of the children for a
while longer, when everything would come all right. "You will be
rewarded a thousand fold," was his promise.
"I don't believe a word of it," was Josie's decision, as she put the
letter back in its envelope after taking a careful copy of it in her
own especial brand of shorthand. "Dink is too common for such a fine
gentleman as Chester Hunt. He could never introduce her to the elite of
the Southland."
The other letter was addressed to the doctor at the sanitarium. In it
he begged the physician to keep Mrs. Waller for a while longer. "I will
make it worth your while. Don't let any of her letters get by. I will
come to see her as soon as I recover from an attack of lumbago that has
laid me low. I don't mind confiding in you that I am hoping to make
Mrs. Waller my wife. We would have been married before if it had not
been for this nervous condition that has made it necessary for her to
be placed in confinement for the time being."
"Wretch! Miserable wretch!" stormed Josie.
"She, perhaps," the letter continued, "will not remember that she had
consented to marry me after a reasonable time should have elapsed since
the death of her husband. Part of her dementia was that she had never
cared for me, when the truth of the matter was nothing but her wifely
loyalty kept her from running away with me, even before Stephen Waller
went overseas."
"Just a pack of lies! And so he is going to see her just as soon as the
lumbago lets him up out of bed. Well, Josie O'Gorman, it looks as
though you would have to change jobs again."
From the postoffice Josie went to a ticket office. After consulting a
time table she bought a ticket, engaged a berth for that night, ran in
to see Alice Chisholm and tell her that she must leave town
immediately, giving her directions where to forward mail and repeat
telegrams.
"Ask Miss Denton to keep my room for me indefinitely. I'll pay whatever
it is. I may need it soon. Just tell her urgent business keeps me from
the city.
"Tell me, Alice--you seem to know the ins and outs of Atlanta people--
was there ever an affair between Mrs. Waller and Chester Hunt?"
"He was supposed to have courted her before she married Stephen Waller,
but it was a well-known fact that she did not like him. It was
astonishing to some of their acquaintances that Stephen Waller should
have made his stepbrother his executor because of Mrs. Waller's evident
dislike of him. Mr. Waller was devoted to him, however, and perhaps his
wife never let him know how she felt about Chester Hunt."
Josie went back to her place of service. Armed with a hot iron she
reported to the master.
"I bane come to press your back, sir."
"Can I trust you not to burn me?" the suffering man queried.
Josie wondered whether he could or not. "I'd like to make such a big
blister on him he could not put on a shirt for weeks to come," she
thought, but she put on an especially stupid expression and said dully,
"I never have burnt anything yet, sir."
Gently she pressed the aching back with an iron just hot enough.
"Gee, that's fine! Do you know, Miss Josie Larson, there are some
things better than beauty and better than brains at times?"
"Yah! Being a good laundress," declared Josie, "but that bane take more
sense than you think, sir."
"Well, perhaps. Anyhow, you are a good girl. I'd like to do something
nice for you--give you something for being so kind to me. What would
you like,"
"I'd like to have the bowls with the rabbits and the chickuns on them."
"Take them! Take them, girl! Take them and welcome," he laughed,
"ghosts and all!"
When Josie packed her suitcase she carefully put in the two bowls. From
a drawer in the library table she purloined a photograph that she had
discovered there when she had dusted the room in the morning, trying to
make it a bit more presentable before the master came down to
breakfast. It was a picture of a handsome, soldierly looking man in an
officer's uniform, with two children snuggling up to him. The children
were Polly and Peter--some years younger but the little Wallers without
doubt. The officer must be their father.
"Stealing is not my forte," Josie said to herself, "but I fancy this
photograph will never be missed by the present occupant of this house.
I may need this in my business."
Josie arranged an attractive supper tray for the sick man.
"You'd better eat a plenty," she warned him. "It bane a long time
before your breakfast." Then she took herself to task for cracking the
quiet joke on him. It surely would be a long time--much longer than he
had any idea of.
Chester Hunt slept in a fool's paradise that night. Soothed by the
ironing of his aching back and comforted by the tray of nourishing and
appetizing food, he had dropped into a doze early in the evening from
which he had only awakened to congratulate himself on the treasure of a
Swedish maid he had at last found.
"She is almost a half-wit," he had said to himself, "but she can cook
and clean and seems to have the kindest heart in the world. She
wouldn't be bad looking if only she did not look so all-fired foolish."
Even Josie's atrocious make-up couldn't blot out entirely her good
looks.
At that very moment the so-called half-wit was boarding a train for the
village in Indiana where a certain sanitarium was situated. Faithful in
small things, according to her father's teaching, Josie had left her
employer's abode in much better order than she had found it, in spite
of having worked for the man only about thirty hours. The kitchen and
dining room were spotless, silver and glass polished and china presses
in order. She left a note on the hall table, which the infuriated
Chester Hunt was to find after a morning spent in frantic pushing of
the bell in his bedroom and vain bellowings over the bannisters for
Josie Larson. It was only after supreme effort that he could get out of
bed, but once he got on his feet it was not so difficult to walk.
"Josie! Josie!" he yelled. "Where are you? What do you think I am to do
with no breakfast? This is a fine way to treat a sick man." His voice
echoed down the hall. Hearing a noise on the street that he thought
proceeded from the kitchen he called again, "Hurry up, you fool. I have
been calling you for hours!"
There was no answer to this command. He leaned over the bannisters and
spied the note on the hall table. Painfully and slowly, his dressing
gown wrapped around him and his slippers flapping dolefully on the
steps, he made his way to the lower hall. Josie had enjoyed greatly
writing that note. It was difficult to do and for that reason great
fun.
Note to self: This is done in letter style. For some reason, it is only
justified, instead of smaller margins. Slightly smaller font, too.
Respected Mr. Hunt:
I bane sad to leave you without more formal leave-taking, but you were
snoring so happy when I went up stairs I bane had no heart to awoken
you. I bear you no grudge for almost letting me know I bane a fool and
am not leaving your service because of that, although it is not happy
to know I can not hide what a fool I bane no matter how hard I work. I
take the two bowls with rabbits and chickuns, the same you gave to me.
I go from your service because in part the son of my aunt's father is
dead. Because of my so sudden leaving I do not charge you for the work
I have given you. It bane a pleasure to work for you. I more profit got
from it than you I gave.
Yours devoted,
Miss JOSIE LARSON.
"The son of her aunt's father," repeated Chester Hunt. "What relation
would that be? What a fool the girl is anyhow! Why didn't she say her
uncle? It might even have been her father," he laughed grimly. "Well,
fool or no fool, Miss Josie Larson, you are the best servant I have
had."