," cried Mrs. Pill with alacrity, "now you're speaking sense. Ain't
he alive?"

"No. He was poisoned!"

The three servants, having the love of horrors peculiar to the lower
classes, looked up with interest. "Lor!" said Thomas, speaking for the
first time and in a thick voice, "who poisoned him?"

"No one knows. He died five years ago, and left mother with me and
four little brothers to bring up. They're all doing well now, though,
and I help mother, as they do. They didn't want me to go out to
service, you know," added Susan, warming on finding sympathetic
listeners. "I could have stopped at home with mother in Stepney, but I
did not want to be idle, and took a situation with a widow lady at
Hampstead. I stopped there a year. Then she died and I went as
parlor-maid to a Senora Gredos. I was only there six months," and she
sighed.

"Why did you leave?" asked Geraldine.

Susan grew red. "I wished for a change," she said curtly.

But the housemaid did not believe her. She was a sharp girl and her
feelings were not refined. "It's just like these men--"

"I said nothing about men," interrupted Susan, sharply.

"Well, then, a man. You've been in love, Susan, and--"

"No. I am not in love," and Susan colored more than ever.

"Why, it's as plain as cook that you are, now," tittered Geraldine.

"Hold your noise and leave the gal be," said Mrs. Pill, offended by the
allusion to her looks, "if she's in love she ain't married, and no more
she ought to be; if she'd had a husband like mine, who drank every day
in the week and lived on my earnings. He's dead now, an' I gave 'im a
'andsome tombstone with the text: 'Go thou and do likewise' on it,
being a short remark, lead letterin' being expensive. Ah well, as I
allays say, 'Flesh is grass with us all.'"

While the cook maundered on Thomas sat with his dull eyes fixed on the
flushed face of Susan. "What about the poisoning?" he demanded.

"It was this way," said Susan. "Father was working at some house in
these parts--"

"What! Down here?"

"Yes, at Rexton, which was then just rising into notice as a place for
gentlefolks. He had just finished with a house when he came home one
day with his wages. He was taken ill and died. The doctor said he had
taken poison, and he died of it. Arsenic it was," explained Susan to
her horrified audience.

"But why did he poison himself?" asked Geraldine.

"I don't know: no one knew. He was gettin' good wages