Kitty thanked him with all the national accompaniments, and trotted off to the store, where Mr. Gifted Hopkins displayed the native amiability of his temper by fumbling down everything in the shape of ginghams and calicoes they had on the shelves, without a murmur at the taste of his customer, who found it hard to get a pattern sufficiently emphatic for her taste.  She succeeded at last, and laid down a five-dollar bill as if she were as used to the pleasing figure on its face as to the sight of her own five digits.

Master Byles Gridley had struck a spade deeper than he knew into his first countermine, for Kitty had none of those delicate scruples about the means of obtaining information which might have embarrassed a diplomatist of higher degree.

CHAPTER XXVIII.

MR. BRADSHAW CALLS ON MISS BADLAM

“Is Miss Hazard in, Kitty?”

“Indade she’s in, Mr. Bridshaw, but she won’t see nobody.”

“What’s the meaning of that, Kitty?  Here is the third time within three days you’ve told me I could n’t see her.  She saw Mr. Gridley yesterday, I know; why won’t she see me to-day?”

“Y’ must ask Miss Myrtle what the rason is, it’s none o’ my business, Mr. Bridshaw.  That’s the order she give me.”

“Is Miss Badlam in?”

Indade she’s in, Mr. Bridshaw, an’ I ’ll go cahl her.”

“Bedad,” said Kitty Fagan to herself, “the cat an’ the fox is goin’ to have another o’ thim big tahks togither, an’ sure the old hole for the stove-pipe has niver been stopped up yet.”

Mr. Bradshaw and Miss Cynthia went into the parlor together, and Mistress Kitty retired to her kitchen.  There was a deep closet belonging to this apartment, separated by a partition from the parlor.  There was a round hole high up in this partition through which a stove-pipe had once passed.  Mistress Kitty placed a stool just under this opening, upon which, as on a, pedestal, she posed herself with great precaution in the attitude of the goddess of other people’s secrets, that is to say, with her head a little on one side, so as to bring her liveliest ear close to the opening.  The conversation which took place in the hearing of the invisible third party began in a singularly free-and-easy manner on Mr. Bradshaw’s part.

“What the d—–­is the reason I can’t see Myrtle, Cynthia?”

“That’s more than I can tell you, Mr. Bradshaw.  I can watch her goings on, but I can’t account for her tantrums.”

“You say she has had some of her old nervous whims,—­has the doctor been to see her?”

“No indeed.  She has kept to herself a good deal, but I don’t think there’s anything in particular the matter with her.  She looks well enough, only she seems a little queer,—­as girls do that have taken a fancy into their heads that they’re in love, you know,—­absent-minded,—­does n’t seem to be interested in things as you would expect after being away so long.”