I found the house easily, but, modest as was its exterior, its rich interior sent my heart down rapidly—it was going to be away beyond my salary I decided. Yet after a, to me, most bewildering interview, I found myself inspecting the big sunny room, and shrinking at the thought of my rough trunks coming in contact with such a handsome carpet. Mrs. Scott had remarked, casually, that she had put her earnings back on the house, as a pure matter of business, and I was radiant when she named her price for the room, and hastily engaging it, I started out at once to order my trunks taken there and to telegraph mother to come.
As I descended the steps I could not help humming a little tune. A policeman strolled across the street toward me, and I had a hazy notion that he had been there when I went in. As I reached the pavement he stepped up, and holding out to me a handkerchief, palpably his own, asked, while looking at me closely, if it was mine.
I was indignant, and I answered, sharply: "It is not mine—as you very well know!"
He laughed rather sheepishly, and said: "Well, you are not stupid, if you are innocent," then asked: "Are you a stranger here?"
I turned back toward the house I had just left, then paused as I said, angrily: "I have a mind to go back and ask Mrs. Scott to come out with me to protect me from the impertinence of the police!"
"Who?" he asked, with wide-open, wondering eyes, "you will go back to who?"
"To Mrs. Scott," I snapped.
"Why," said he, "there's no Mrs. Scott there."
"No?" I questioned satirically. "No? Well, as I have just engaged board from Mrs. Scott, I venture to differ with you."
"Good Lord, Miss," the man said, "Mrs. William Scott's been dead these nine months or more. That's no place for honest people now. Why—why, we're watchin' the house this moment, hoping to catch that woman's jail-bird son, who has broken jail in Louisville—don't look so white, Miss!"