"Must one understand a person to like him?" I queried good-humoredly. I was beginning to think I might have dreamed about that key.
"I don't know," she said, "I don't always understand Miss Lucetta, but I like her through and through, ma'am, as I like this little finger," and holding up this member to my inspection, she crossed the room for my water-pitcher, which she proposed to fill with hot water.
I followed her closely with my eyes. When she came back, I saw her attention caught by the break in the flooring, which she had not noticed on entering.
"Oh," she exclaimed, "what a shame!" her honest face coloring as she drew the rug back over the small black gap. "I am sure, ma'am," she cried, "you must think very poorly of us. But I assure you, ma'am, it's honest poverty, nothing but honest poverty as makes them so neglectful," and with an air as far removed from mystery as her frank, good-natured manner seemed to be from falsehood, she slid from the room with a kind:
"Don't hurry, ma'am. It is Miss Knollys' turn in the kitchen, and she isn't as quick as Miss Lucetta."
"Humph," thought I, "supposing I had called in the police."
But by the time she had returned with the water, my doubts had reawakened. She was not changed in manner, though I have no doubt she had recounted all that I had said, below, but I was, for I remembered the matches and thought I saw a way of tripping her up in her self-complacency.
Just as she was leaving me for the second time I called her back.
"What is the matter with your matches?" I asked. "I couldn't make them light last night."
With a wholly undisturbed countenance she turned toward the bureau and took up the china trinket that held the few remaining matches I had not scraped on the piece of sandpaper I myself had fastened up alongside the door. A sheepish cry of dismay at once escaped her.