“I’m sure she will,” laughed Josie, “and I’m sure the boarders deserve all they get when she gives them what’s what. I’ll try my best to be good and not deserve such things.”
“Lawsamussy, Miss! Anybody knows dat if my Peter an’ Brer Si recommends a pusson dat pusson air sho ter be fust-class. Peter wouldn’t no mo’ send a onsuitable boa’der here dan Si would fotch one. Dem two niggers air got both Miss Lucy an’ me ter reckon with an’ what dey reckons am no lef’ over victuals if dey ain’t got gumption enough ter respec’ the sanctity of a fust-class boa’din’ house kep’ by ’ristocrats.”
Teddy arrived on the stroke of the hour appointed. His mother and sister were waiting in the automobile, having driven in from Peewee Valley.
“Mother and I thought it wiser not to tell Anita what we suspect in Cheatham, so remember,” he whispered as he greeted Josie in the hall.
“Perhaps you are right. She might find it difficult to be polite to him,” said Josie, but in her heart she felt it a rather dangerous thing to leave a young girl in ignorance of the character of a man who was plainly paying court to her.
“Well,” she thought, “no doubt they know their own business best and she could hardly elope with him to-night. I hope by to-morrow we may know something definite.”
It was with a feeling of mingled rage and pity that Josie entered the Ellett house—rage that it should be owned by Cheatham and pity that Ursula should have had to give up such a home and go to live in what seemed like squalor in comparison. She remembered the bare, plain furnishings of Ursula’s apartment, made attractive only by the indefinable touch of taste that the girl always evinced. Josie looked critically at the damask hangings of the drawing room where Cheatham stood to greet his guests, at the rich oriental rugs, the old portraits of Ursula’s ancestors; the mahogany chairs and tables of antique make—every stick with a pedigree!
It was a marvel to Josie that the citizens of Louisville had not suspected this man of swindling his stepchildren. It seemed strange that they had not arisen in a body and demanded a reckoning, but when she remembered Ursula’s extreme reticence she realized that having kept her own counsel the citizens of Louisville would have been officious indeed to have thrust themselves into her affairs. No doubt Cheatham had a perfectly plausible tale to tell concerning his possession of the property and since Ursula had never attempted to correct his statements it was natural for neighbors to accept them as true.
One of the things that Josie had unearthed in the sleuthing she had done during the day was that Cheatham was endeavoring to sell the old Ellett house and negotiations were pending with an investment company with a view to making over the place into many small apartments.
A hitch in the title had kept the deal from going through, so a real estate agent had informed her when she questioned him concerning the property as though she herself were a possible buyer. “I wouldn’t mess in it myself,” he declared, “but I reckon he’ll slick it up somehow by letting the place to be sold for taxes and then buying it in himself.”