Mr. Bruce had worked at Bellevieu ever since he was an apprentice and had not done so without learning something of its mistress's character. So, to please her love of gossip, he turned to where she had taken a chair to watch him and remarked:
"Terrible sad thing about John Chester's girl."
"'Girl'? Servant, do you mean?" instantly interested by the name of "Chester."
"Servant? Oh! no. That's a luxury my neighbor never had, nor any of us in Brown Street, except when somebody was sick. We're work-a-day folks on my block, Mrs. Cecil."
"Humph. What do you mean, then, by 'girl'?"
"His adopted daughter, Dorothy C. Haven't you seen about her in the paper?" he continued, well pleased that he had found some topic interesting to his employer.
"No. I've seen no papers. I've been ill, or that foolish doctor said I was, which amounts to the same thing. Anyway, I hardly ever do read the papers in the summer time. There's never anything in them—with everybody out of town, so."
The plumber laughed, a trifle grimly; answering with some spirit:
"Well, everybody isn't away, when there are several hundred people swelter all the hot season right here in Baltimore."
"Why don't they go away? Why do they 'swelter'—such a horrid word that is!" returned the lady, more to calm a strangely rising flutter of her own spirits than because there was sense in the words; which sounded so foolish to herself even, that she laughed. But her laugh was a nervous one and was instantly followed by the inquiry: