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.