n's clever
enough to have me sent away from here in a jiffy. And the worst of it
is," twisting her hands together, "there _mayn't_ be _anything_ going on
really. If they were as innocent as lambs they couldn't act any
different; and just the same, things _might_ have happened by accident."

"That's the worst of it," was Mrs. Cupp's fretted rejoinder. "Any old
piece of carving might have dropped out of a balustrade, and any lady
that wasn't well might have nightmare and be disturbed in her sleep."

"Yes," admitted Jane, anxiously, "that is the worst of it. Sometimes I
feel so foolish I'm all upset with myself."

The gossip in servants' halls embraces many topics. In country houses
there is naturally much to be said of village incidents, of the scandals
of cottages and the tragedies of farms. This afternoon, at one end of
the table the talk had been of a cottage scandal which had verged on
tragedy. A handsome, bouncing, flaunting village girl had got into that
"trouble" which had been anticipated for her by both friends and enemies
for some time. Being the girl she was, much venomous village social stir
had resulted. It had been predicted that she would "go up to London," or
that she would drown herself, having an impudent high spirit which
brought upon her much scornful and derisive flouting on her evil day.
The manor servants knew a good deal of her, because she had been for a
while a servant at The Kennel Farm, and had had a great fancy for
Ameerah, whom it had pleased her to make friends with. When she fell
suddenly ill, and for days lay at the point of death, there was a
stealthy general opinion that Ameerah, with her love spells and potions,
could have said much which might have been enlightening, if she had
chosen. The girl had been in appalling danger. The village doctor, who
had been hastily called in, had at one moment declared that life had
left her body. It was, in fact, only Ameerah who had insisted that she
was not dead. After a period of prostration, during which she seemed a
corpse, she had slowly come back to earthly existence. The graphic
descriptions of the scenes by her bedside, of her apparent death, her
cold and bloodless body, her lagging and ghastly revival to
consciousness, aroused in the servants' hall a fevered interest. Ameerah
was asked questions, and gave such answers as satisfied herself if not
her interlocutors. She was perfectly aware of the opinions of her fellow
servitors. She knew all