She carried the dinner-things across to the kitchen. Jelly, who assisted at the ceremony, as far as watching and talking went, was standing in the passage, when her quick eyes caught sight of two small pieces of glass. She stooped to pick them up.
"Look, Phillis! You have been breaking something. It's uncommonly careless to leave the bits about."
"Is it!" retorted Phillis. "Your eyes are in everything. I thought I took 'em all up," she added, looking on the ground.
"What did you break?"
"Nothing. It was the doctor. He dropped one of them dusty glass jars down the stairs. It did give me a start. You should have heard the smash."
"What made him drop it?" asked Jelly.
"Goodness knows," returned the older woman. "He's not a bit like himself to-day; it's just as if something had come to him."
She began her dinner as she spoke, standing, her usual mode of taking it. Jelly, following her free-and-easy habits, stood against the door-post, apparently interested in the progress of the meal. They presented a contrast, these two women, the one a thin, upright giantess, the other a dwarf stooping forward. Jelly, a lady's-maid, held herself of course altogether above Phillis, an ignorant (as Jelly would have described her) servant-of-all-work, though condescending to drop in for the sake of gossip.
"Did you happen to hear how the doctor found Ketler?"
"As if I should be likely to hear!" was Phillis's retort. "He'd not tell me, and I couldn't ask. My master's not one you can put questions to, Jelly."