“Well, she ain’t anything to brag of; but say, a man can stand regulation cooking done bad, but when it comes to new-fangled messes done bad, so a man don’t know what he’s eating, whether it’s cats or poisonous mushrooms, I draw the line.  Miss Hart’s bread is more generally saleratusy and heavy, but at least you know it’s heavy bread, and I got heavy stuff at the Joneses and didn’t know what it was.  And Miss Hart’s pies are tough, but you know you’ve got tough pies, and at the Joneses’ I had tough things that I couldn’t give a name to.  Miss Hart’s doughnuts are greasy, but Lord, the greasy things at the Joneses’ that Susy made!  At least you know what you’ve got when you eat a greasy doughnut, and if it hurts you you know what to tell the doctor, but I had to give it up.  I’d rather have bad cooking and know what it is than bad cooking and know what it isn’t.  Then there were other things.  I like, when I get home from the store, to have a little quiet and read my paper, and Susy and Fanny, if I didn’t stay in the parlor, were banging the piano and singing at me all the time to get me down-stairs.  So I’ve gone back to the hotel, and I’m enough sight better off.  Of course, when that matter of Miss Farrel came up I left.  A man don’t want to think he may get a little arsenic mixed in with the bad cooking, but now I’m convinced that’s all right.”

“How do you know?” asked Henry, paying for the peppermints.  “I never thought Miss Hart had anything to do with it myself, but of course she wasn’t exactly acquitted, neither she nor the girl.  You said yourself that she bought arsenic here.”

“So she did, and it all went to kill rats,” said Albion.  “Lots of folks have bought arsenic here to kill rats with.  They didn’t all of them poison Miss Farrel.”  Albion nodded wisely and mysteriously.  “No, Lucinda’s all right,” he said.  “I ain’t at liberty to say how I know, but I do know.  I may get bad cooking at the hotel, but I won’t get no arsenic.”

Henry looked curiously at the other man.  “So you’ve found out something?” he said.

“I ain’t at liberty to say,” replied Albion.  “It’s a pretty nice day, ain’t it?  Hope we ain’t going to have such a hot summer as last, though hot weather is mighty good for my business, since I put in the soda-fountain.”

Henry, walking homeward with his package of peppermints, speculated a little on what Albion Bennet had said; then his mind reverted to his anxiety with regard to Sylvia, and her discovery that he had returned to the shop.  He passed his arm across his face and sniffed at his coat-sleeve.  He wondered if he smelled of leather.  He planned to go around to the kitchen door and wash his hands at the pump in the yard before entering the house, but he could not be sure about the leather.  He wondered if Rose would notice it and be disgusted.  His heart sank as he neared home.  He sniffed at his coat-sleeve again.  He wondered if he could possibly slip into the bedroom and put on another coat for dinner before Sylvia saw him.  He doubted if he could manage to get away unnoticed after dinner.  He speculated, if Sylvia asked him where he was going again, what he could say.  He considered what he could say if she were to call him to account for his long absence that forenoon.