At five o'clock, sharp, Josie was installed in the kitchen of the old Waller house.

"You will find the raw materials in the refrigerator. I am to have a gentleman to dine with me. Dinner at seven." Chester Hunt's tone was one of command and his manner not an agreeable one. Josie could well understand that the girls in the business world did not find him so agreeable as the society girls.

"All right, sir! I bane on time. Must I cuke everything I find in the refrigerator?"

"Heavens, no! Just get up a good dinner. If you don't know how you better say so and get out before you start."

"I bane asking, but if you don't want me to ask I bane smart enough to yump in."

"All right then 'yump in,'" he said, laughing in spite of being in a decidedly bad temper.

Josie "yumped in" with a will. By the process of selection from what she found in the pantry and refrigerator she concocted a good dinner and had it on the table at seven o'clock. This was something of a feat, because every cooking utensil had to be scoured before she could use it and even the china and silver was not fit to put on the table without a thorough washing.

"My, I wish I had Elizabeth Wright's mother here!" Josie said to herself. "Wouldn't she have the time of her life getting this place cleaned up?"

The drop-leaf mahogany table in the beautiful old dining room looked very inviting when Josie informed the master:

"Dinner bane served up, sir!"

A low bowl of violets and early hyacinths that the new maid had found blooming in the back yard were reflected in the polished surface of the mahogany. The table must perforce be bare as all the tablecloths in the house were soiled. She had found some lacy mats which she had washed and ironed hurriedly. The silver and gla.s.s were polished to the nth degree. The master looked his approval and actually smiled at the clever maid but Josie's eyes were dull and fishy and on her face nothing was expressed but dense stupidity. She proceeded to serve the dinner with meticulous care, thankful for the training she had had at the Higgledy-Piggledy tea room. Not one false move did she make in her service, but not once did she allow a gleam of intelligence to flicker across her countenance.

"Where did you make your find?" asked the guest, who turned out to be Braxton Denton, Miss Oleander's horse-racing brother, a middle-aged man with a flashy cravat and a crooked mouth.

"She found me. She seems to be a good enough servant considering she is so marvelously stupid."

Josie overheard the conversation as she removed the soup plates. In the pantry she permitted herself the luxury of a grin and after she slid the broiled pompano from the grill to the fish plates she let off more steam by a pirouette that a premiere danseuse might have envied.

Silently and efficiently she served the whole meal, managing to efface herself so utterly that the two men talked as freely as though they had been alone in the dining room.

"Gloomy old house!" said Braxton Denton. "I wonder you hang on here."

"It has been my home ever since I was a boy and I am more comfortable here than I would be at a hotel. I am very fond of this place. The property would run down terribly, too, if I let it stand vacant. It is only gloomy because I can't get anyone to keep it in order. The servants have all left and I don't seem to be able to get any more--not until this girl came last night. How long she will stick I can't tell."

"Until I find out what I want to know," muttered Josie to the empty fish plates as she bore them off.

"How is your sister-in-law getting?"

"No better," with a heavy sadness in his tone. "I am afraid the case is a hopeless one. I get daily reports from the sanitarium and they are most discouraging."

"And the children?"

"Oh, they are in excellent hands, both of them well. They never ask for their mother, however, nor does she ask for them. It is a strange case--one almost of antagonism. They have shown the strangest lack of feeling in regard to their mother and she seems really to hate them. I can hardly blame her because while they are only little children their callousness is positively diabolical."

Josie permitted herself the slight revenge of sprinkling a little extra pepper on her master's English mutton chop.

"Very imprudent of me, but I hope he will sneeze his handsome nose off," she said, giving the pepper box another shake.

She had her wish. His handsome nose didn't exactly come off but it was not for lack of sneezing.

"Kerchoo! Kerchoo!" he gasped for breath, choking and sneezing at the same time.

"Heavens, girl!" he finally sputtered. "How much pepper do you usually put on chops?"

"Mine is fine," ventured his guest.

"Excuse, please," and Josie gave a stiff curtsy. "My foot slipped and I bane put more pepper than I meant."

His feelings were soothed by a caramel pie. After dinner he came to the pantry door and called the new maid to him.

"You have done very well, all but over seasoning the chops."

"The chop!" corrected Josie.

"I think you will be able to do the work. I want breakfast at eight.

You must look after my mail carefully. Most of my mail comes to my residence. I shall expect you to do the marketing and not bother me with details of housekeeping. Do you need any a.s.sistance with the cleaning? I fancy everything is pretty dirty."

"Filthy!" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed Josie, "but I bane strong."

"All right! You understand about looking after my mail carefully, do you not?"

"Yah! I yoost put it on the desk. I bane take care."

How much care she did not think it advisable to tell him, but his mail was one of the things to which Josie was determined to give much attention.

CHAPTER XIII 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 advertis.e.m.e.nts 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 d.i.n.k. 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 a.s.surances of truest affection.

"So," mused Josie, "lying to each other, too! Chester Hunt thinks the kids are with d.i.n.k. 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: