“No.  The fust thing he knew, the’ they we’e!” Clementina stood expectant, but the chef smoked on as if that were all there was to say, and seemed to have forgotten her.  “Who do you think put them thea, Mr. Mahtin?”

The chef looked up as if surprised to find her still there.  “Oh!  Oh, yes!  Who d’ I think?  Why, I know, Boss.  But I don’t believe I’d betta tell you.”

“Oh, do, Mr. Mahtin!  If you knew how I felt about it—­”

“No, no!  I guess I betta not.  ’Twouldn’t do you any good.  I guess I won’t say anything moa.  But if I was in youa place, and I really wanted to know whe’e them slippas come from—­”

“I do—­I do indeed—­”

The chef paused before he added, “I should go at Fane.  I guess what he don’t know ain’t wo’th knowin’, and I guess nobody else knows anything.  Thea!  I don’t know but I said mo’n I ought, now.”

What the chef said was of a piece with what had been more than once in Clementina’s mind; but she had driven it out, not because it might not be true, but because she would not have it true.  Her head drooped; she turned limp and springless away.  Even the heart of the tease was touched; he had not known that it would worry her so much, though he knew that she disliked the clerk.

“Mind,” he called after her, too late, “I ain’t got no proof ’t he done it.”

She did not answer him, or look round.  She went to her room, and sat down in the growing dusk to think, with a hot lump in her throat.

Mrs. Atwell found her there an hour later, when she climbed to the chamber where she thought she ought to have heard Clementina moving about over her own room.

“Didn’t know but I could help you do youa dressin’,” she began, and then at sight of the dim figure she broke off:  “Why, Clem!  What’s the matte?  Ah’ you asleep?  Ah’ you sick?  It’s half an hour of the time and—­”

“I’m not going,” Clementina answered, and she did not move.

“Not goin’!  Why the land o’—­”

“Oh, I can’t go, Mrs. Atwell.  Don’t ask me!  Tell Mrs. Milray, please!”

“I will, when I got something to tell,” said Mrs. Atwell.  “Now, you just say what’s happened, Clementina Claxon!” Clementina suffered the woful truth to be drawn from her.  “But you don’t know whether it’s so or not,” the landlady protested.

“Yes, yes, I do!  It was the last thing I thought of, and the chef wouldn’t have said it if he didn’t believe it.”

“That’s just what he would done,” cried Mrs. Atwell.  “And I’ll give him such a goin’ ova, for his teasin’, as he ain’t had in one while.  He just said it to tease.  What you goin’ to say to Mrs. Milray?”

“Oh, tell her I’m not a bit well, Mrs. Atwell!  My head does ache, truly.”

“Why, listen,” said Mrs. Atwell, recklessly.  “If you believe he done it—­and he no business to—­why don’t you just go to the dance, in ’em, and then give ’em back to him after it’s ova?  It would suv him right.”