She straightened the furniture in the study, pushing the familiar sofa back in place, from where Mr. DeBrugh invariably moved it. Then she knocked the ashes from the meerschaum, wiped it off, and placed it carefully in the little glass cabinet on the wall where he always kept it.
Times would be different now, she knew. She remembered what he had said. "You will be well taken care of." But there had been something else. "After Mrs. DeBrugh and I are gone."
Letty could no longer hold back the tears. She fell into a chair and they poured forth.
But time always passes, and with it goes a healing balm for most all sorrows. First there was the funeral. Then came other arrangements. And there was the will, which Mrs. DeBrugh never mentioned.
His things would have fallen into decay but for the hands of Letty. Always her dust-cloth made his study immaculate. Always the sofa was in place and the pipe, clean and shining, in the cabinet.
There was a different hardness about Mrs. DeBrugh. No longer was she content with driving Letty like a slave day in and day out. She became even more unbearable.
There were little things, like taking away her privilege of having Saturday afternoons off. And the occasional "forgetting" of Letty's weekly pay.
Once Letty thought of leaving during the night, of packing her few clothes and going for ever from the house. But that was foolish. There was no place to go, and she was getting too old for maid service.
Besides, hadn't Mr. DeBrugh said she would be taken care of. "After Mrs. DeBrugh and I are gone." Perhaps she would not live much longer.
And then one morning Mrs. DeBrugh called Letty in to talk with her. It was the hour Letty had been awaiting—and dreading.