“Smells the soap?” repeated the Judge, in bewilderment.
“Yes, sir; I caught her the other day. She were in your room. You know, sir, you has in your bathroom sandalwood soap. Master Titus, he have pure Castile; the strange boy he have common toilet; in the kitchen we have Hittaker’s.”
“Ah! Hittaker’s,” interposed the Judge, “is that a good soap?”
“Fine, sir, for a cheap soap. But what I was goin’ to say is this: This here little girl loves good soap, and, young as she be, she knows the difference. She rolled your cake in these weeny hands, she put it to that little nose, she wanted it herself, but what do she do? She slips into your dish the little bit of sandalwood that I’d given her, she goes to the upper hall closet an’ takes a cake of Hittaker to her own room.”
“Well!” observed the Judge, patiently. He did not understand what all this talk about coal, and sticks, and soap meant, and he did not like to see the sensitive child stand there looking like a culprit.
“Sir,” said Mrs. Blodgett, solemnly, “she be a-tryin’ to save.”
The Judge started. This threw a new light on the subject.
“Yes,” Mrs. Blodgett continued, “I know that this little girl has been a poor little girl, but her mother were a lady. I can tell by her ways, an’ I’m tired of tellin’ her that you don’t want her to be a poor little girl no longer, a pickin’, tradin’, savin’ little girl. You does the business. She has only to be good an’ not wasteful, but also not beggarlike. What’s what in one place isn’t what’s what in another. She have mentioned River Street. Now, River Street aint Grand Avenue.”
“Very well, Mrs. Blodgett,” said the Judge, with a reassuring nod, “I will talk to her,” and in great relief the fat woman surrendered the culprit to him and went away.
After the housekeeper’s departure Bethany advanced somewhat timidly to the fire, and, taking off her cap, coat, and gloves, placed them in a neat little heap on a chair. Then she looked up apprehensively at the Judge.