“There!” he shouted. “Here’s the staircase burner turned full on, and it’s the same here—and here—and here,” he cried, rushing from chamber to chamber, turning off burners and throwing open windows. “Yes,” he reiterated, as he came downstairs again, “every burner upstairs was started—the only ones turned off are that in my room where the mischief began and in the dining-room where you were sitting.”
“They are all right downstairs,” remarked Clementina from the back of the hall. But Tom went down and made a re-examination before he would be satisfied on that point.
Mrs. Grant and Miss Latimer looked at each other bewildered.
“I’ve not been upstairs to do up the rooms yet,” observed Clementina. “The only room I’ve tidied yet is Mr. Tom’s. I heard the mistress say to you, ma’am, as she went out, that she’d just been over all the burners, and that they were right.”
“Poor dear lady,” said Mrs. Grant; “she has been so flurried and put about that when she tried the handles, she must have turned the gas on and never noticed that she did it!”
“That must have been so, I suppose,” Miss Latimer reluctantly admitted; “but it’s hard to believe. Lucy is so wonderfully careful. However much she suffers herself, none of her duties suffer!”
“Ah, but that’s different,” Mrs. Grant replied. “She thought she was thoroughly doing her duty now; only her mind slipped off, and she did it the other way about.”
“I don’t believe it,” said Clementina energetically.
“What don’t you believe?” asked Tom.
“I don’t believe my mistress made any mistake. I never knew anybody so careful as she is.”