And this might have been the case, too, had not the old seine-maker dropped in at Ruffluck one evening and been asked to stay for coffee.
The seine-maker, like most persons whose thoughts are far away and who do not keep in touch with what happens immediately about them, was always taciturn. But when his coffee had been poured and he had emptied it into his saucer, to let it cool, it struck him that he ought to say something.
"To-day there's bound to be a letter from Glory Goldie," he said.
"I feel it in my bones."
"We had greetings from her only a fortnight ago in her letter to the senator," Katrina reminded him.
The seine-maker blew into his saucer a couple of times before saying anything more. Whereupon he again found it expedient to bridge a long silence with a word or so.
"Maybe some blessing has come to the girl, and it has given her something to write about."
"What kind of blessing might that be?" scouted Katrina. "When you've got to drudge as a servant, one day is as humdrum as another."
The seine-maker bit off a corner of a sugar-lump and gulped his coffee. When he had finished an appalling stillness fell upon the room.
"It might be that Glory Goldie met some person in the street," he blurted out, his half-dead eyes vacantly staring at space. He seemed not to know what he was saying.
Katrina did not think it necessary to respond; so replenished his cup without speaking.