“Please, Miss Hattie, I haven’t got any pockets in my dress. Miss Scrimp wouldn’t let me have any pockets in ’em for fear I’d put in crackers or something when I’m hungry, and that is very often.”
“Then run and put it under your pillow before you go down stairs,” said Hattie, smiling.
“Please, there’s no pillow to my bed. But I’ll hide it among the rags there, and eat it so thankfully, for I am real hungry, since I told you what Miss Scrimp did and how I saw it.”
And Jessie went and hid the cake, which was to be her only supper, and then quickly returned for the note.
She ran down stairs light as a kitten, and finding Miss Scrimp’s door ajar looked in and saw that lady—pardon the name—busy over the book in which she kept her boarding accounts.
Jessie slipped in, dropped the paper over Miss Scrimp’s shoulder on the table, and was out of the room so quickly that Miss Scrimp did not know who brought the note.
But she trembled and turned pale when she read it.
“I wonder if that little brat of a bound girl has dared to tell her about the letter?” she ejaculated. “No,” she continued, “it can’t be that. Jess knows I’d skin her alive if she told, and she’d bite her tongue off first. I’ll bet Miss Hattie wants to take a room lower down, now that she is getting more than twice as much money a week as any other girl in the house gets. That’s it; I’ll go right up. She is real good pay, always cash down the day it is due, and no grumbling. I’ll give her the best room in the house, and turn that saucy Kate Marmont away, if she objects to giving it up. I wish I’d set Biddy Lanigan a-going at her to-night; she would have wished the gray hairs in her butter had got cross ways in her throat before she talked about ’em.”
And Miss Scrimp closed up her old account book, took up her hand-lamp, and started up the steep, narrow, and dirty stairs toward Hattie Butler’s room. She had been so surprised that she had not even asked herself who could have left the note, nor even thought how it came floating down on her table.
Almost breathless, she reached the landing in front of Hattie’s room, and knocked at the door.