"Maybe we'll act ourselves, some day," added Alice.
"Oh, no!" protested her sister. "But let's sit down. The meal is spoiling. Oh!" she cried, with a hasty glance at the table. "Not a bit of salt. I forgot it. Alice, dear, just slip across the hall and borrow some from Mrs. Dalwood."
Humming, in the lightness of her heart, a little tune, Alice crossed to the apartment of their neighbor, not pausing after her first knock at the rear kitchen door.
She heard a rattling among the pots and pans, and naturally supposed Mrs. Dalwood was there.
"May we have some salt?" Alice called, as she entered the kitchen, but the next moment she drew back in surprise and fear, for a strange man, rising suddenly from under the sink, confronted her.
He, too, seemed startled.
"Oh—Oh!" gasped Alice. "Isn't Mrs. Dalwood here?"
"I—I believe not," stammered the man. "I—I'm the plumber—there's a leak——"
"Oh, excuse me," murmured Alice, but even in her embarrassment she could not help thinking that the man looked like anything but a plumber. She backed out of the kitchen, after picking up a salt cellar, and was more startled as she observed the man following her.