Mrs. Gentrie frowned at the offending object as she would have regarded evidences that a mouse had been in the shelf which held the spare bedding. She walked back to the cellar stairs, raised her voice, and called, “Hester! Oh, Hester!”
After a few moments she heard the heavy thud of Hester’s steps across the kitchen floor, then the stolid, “Yes, ma’am.”
“How did this tin get here?”
Hester advanced a tentative step or two down the cellar stairs, looked at the can in Mrs. Gentrie’s hand. The vacancy of her expression was sufficient answer to the question.
Mrs. Gentrie said, “It was right over in that corner. And I notice, Hester, you haven’t been cleaning up the 1939 preserves. We had 1940 pears last night, but there are still several cans of ’39 pears.”
“I didn’t know that,” Hester said.
“And this tin,” Mrs. Gentrie observed, “was in with the ’39 preserves.”
Hester shook her head. Long experience as a domestic had taught her that nothing was ever gained by argument. When the lady of the house took a notion to blame you for some slip, you stood there, let her speak her piece, and then went back to work. As it was, Hester was losing just this much time from the mangle, and her mind was half occupied with the unfinished ironing which remained in the kitchen.
There was a big wooden box over by the furnace where Arthur threw odds and ends of scraps, bits of old tin, pieces of wood, and an occasional can. Mrs. Gentrie tossed the offending can into this box.
“It doesn’t seem,” she said as she started upstairs, “that it would have been possible for anyone to have put an empty can on that shelf. I can’t imagine you doing anything like that, Hester.”