Irene’s chair was stationed by the table on which the various cooking appliances were placed and she brewed wonderful, strong, clear coffee in the electric percolator. Such crisp cinnamon toast was never seen as that she made fresh for each customer, and the golden brown waffles tasted like ambrosia, so the enthusiastic treating trysters declared.
To Mary Louise fell the task of serving as well as assisting Irene in the cooking. Very sweet and demure she looked in her black dress with white organdie collar and cuffs and little bibbed waitress’ apron. She had not trained the many waitresses who had fallen out with Aunt Sally without learning something of the art of waiting herself. Her skill in serving astonished her as well as her friends. She never slopped the tea or coffee, never dropped the spoons, never rattled the dishes, never forgot the napkins or the water. In fact, she was so perfect that a grand-dame, evidently a stranger in Dorfield, who had come into the Higgledy Piggledy Shop in search of novelties and had stayed to tea, was so impressed by the pretty waitress with the sad merry face and the pretty clever hands that she had then and there offered her a job and promised to pay her twice as much as she was getting in her present position no matter what that sum might be.
“Of course, it is amusing,” Mary Louise said when she told her indignant partners of the occurrence, “but it makes me feel rather comfy to know that I can always make my living in some way or other. The grand lady left her card with me in case I should ever change my mind. You girls had better be very nice to me or I’ll go and take up with another mistress,” she laughed.
CHAPTER XVI
A TENANT FROM THE WEST
Chief Lonsdale’s talk to Slater had a very salutary effect in that in watching the Hathaway house he used eyes and ears as well as his heels and did not confine himself to walking around and around the block but made occasional trips into the yard examining doors and windows and, every now and then, standing in the shadow of the building and listening attentively. Of course, nothing happened to disturb the quiet of his watch. Night after night the place was under surveillance and morning after morning it was reported that nothing of importance had happened. The light in the alley was broken very often and that caused some anxiety but it seemed difficult to place the blame.
Once, Aunt Hannah Conant saw an Italian-looking youth taking aim at the light with a gumbo shooter but she knocked on her kitchen window and scared him away. Irene met this boy several times on her way to the Higgledy Piggledy Shop. She looked at him a little curiously the second time, for in some way he was familiar to her, something about the set of his head or the turn of his pale emaciated cheek. He met her eye boldly and a little saucily, making an almost imperceptible moue which made Irene blush and drop her eyes.
“I can’t imagine where I have seen him before. Perhaps he is like some picture—may even have posed for some artist. So many of the Italians are models,” she said to herself.
After that, the boy avoided her, never meeting her face to face but, several times in the dusk as she was on her way home, she saw his shabby, if jaunty, back disappearing around the corner or sliding up the alley. She didn’t mention this to anybody, it seeming of no especial importance. When Aunt Hannah spoke of the boy with the gumbo shooter, she was inclined to think it was the same one but, when one mentioned anything to Aunt Hannah, she made so much of it that Irene had fallen into the habit of keeping minor matters to herself, and so she made no attempt to identify the saucy boy.
A tenant was not found for the Hathaway house in spite of its being very desirable from many standpoints. It was large, comfortable, in a good if not stylish neighborhood convenient to the business section. There were many boarding house keepers who were anxious to get it, but Mr. Conant was opposed to Mary Louise’s renting it to any of them.