she said, "I don't think he'll come bothering any more."

"You're very optimistic, Jane-Ellen."

"I beg your pardon, sir, those long words--"

"Very hopeful, I meant. He'll be back to-morrow."

"Not after what I said to him."

"Well, Jane-Ellen, if you have really found the potent thing to say
under such circumstances, you're a true benefactor to your sex."

She looked at him with mild confusion.

"I'm afraid I don't rightly understand, sir."

He smiled.

"It was my way of asking you what you had said to him that you imagined
would keep him from coming back."

"I told him I had only pretended to like him, all these years. People,
particularly gentlemen, don't like to think you have to pretend to like
them."

Crane laughed aloud, wondering if the girl had any idea how amusing she
was. In the pause that followed, the sound of a deep masculine voice
could be heard suddenly under their feet. The office was immediately
above the servants' sitting-room, and it was but too evident that a
visitor had just entered.

Crane looked at the cook questioningly, and she had the grace to color.

"Why, did you ever, sir," she said. "There he is, this very moment!"

"Shall I go down and forbid him the house?" asked Burton, and though he
spoke in fun, he would have been delighted to act in earnest.

"Oh, no, sir, thank you," she answered. "I am not going back to the
kitchen."

This reminded her employer of the extreme difficulty he had experienced
in seeing his cook at all.

"Why did you try and get out of seeing me, Jane-Ellen?" he said. "You
knew about what I had to say, I suppose?"

"I had a notion, sir."

"And were you afraid?"

At this question, the cook bent her head until a shadow fell upon it,
but Crane had a clear impression that she was laughing, so clear that he
said:

"And may I ask why it is a comic idea that a servant should be afraid of
her employer?"

The cook now raised a mask-like face and said most respectfully:

"No, sir, I was not exactly afraid," and, having said this, without the
slightest warning she burst into an unmistakable giggle.

Nobody probably enjoys finding that the idea of his inspiring terror is
merely ludicrous. Crane regarded his cook with a sternness that was not
entirely false. She, still struggling to regain complete gravity at the
corners of her mouth, said civilly:

"Oh, I do hope you'll excuse my laughing, sir. The fact is that it was
not I who tried to avoid seein