Rumor of the fact could not fail to go through the house, and long before his day's work was done it reached the chef, and amused him as a piece of the Boss's luck. He was smoking his evening pipe at the kitchen door after supper, when Clementina passed him on one of the many errands that took her between Mrs. Milray's room and her own, and he called to her: "Boss, what's this I hear about a pair o' glass slippas droppin' out the sky int' youa lap?"
Clementina was so happy that she thought she might trust him for once, and she said, "Oh, yes, Mr. Mahtin! Who do you suppose sent them?" she entreated him so sweetly that it would have softened any heart but the heart of a tease.
"I believe I could give a pootty good guess if I had the facts."
Clementina innocently gave them to him, and he listened with a well-affected sympathy.
"Say Fane fust told you about 'em?"
"Yes. 'He'e's a package for you,' he said. Just that way; and he couldn't tell me who left it, or anything."
"Anybody asked him about it since?"
"Oh, yes! Mrs. Milray, and Mrs. Atwell, and Mr. Atwell, and everybody."
"Everybody." The chef smiled with a peculiar droop of one eye. "And he didn't know when the slippas got into the landlo'd's box?"
"No. The fust thing he knew, the' they we'e!" Clementina stood expectant, but the chef smoked on as if that were all there was to say, and seemed to have forgotten her. "Who do you think put them thea, Mr. Mahtin?"