“My father was a carpenter,” remarked Susan, sadly.

“Ah,” cried Mrs. Pill with alacrity, “now you’re speaking sense.  Ain’t he alive?”

“No.  He was poisoned!”

The three servants, having the love of horrors peculiar to the lower classes, looked up with interest.  “Lor!” said Thomas, speaking for the first time and in a thick voice, “who poisoned him?”

“No one knows.  He died five years ago, and left mother with me and four little brothers to bring up.  They’re all doing well now, though, and I help mother, as they do.  They didn’t want me to go out to service, you know,” added Susan, warming on finding sympathetic listeners.  “I could have stopped at home with mother in Stepney, but I did not want to be idle, and took a situation with a widow lady at Hampstead.  I stopped there a year.  Then she died and I went as parlor-maid to a Senora Gredos.  I was only there six months,” and she sighed.

“Why did you leave?” asked Geraldine.

Susan grew red.  “I wished for a change,” she said curtly.

But the housemaid did not believe her.  She was a sharp girl and her feelings were not refined.  “It’s just like these men—­”

“I said nothing about men,” interrupted Susan, sharply.

“Well, then, a man.  You’ve been in love, Susan, and—­”

“No.  I am not in love,” and Susan colored more than ever.

“Why, it’s as plain as cook that you are, now,” tittered Geraldine.

“Hold your noise and leave the gal be,” said Mrs. Pill, offended by the allusion to her looks, “if she’s in love she ain’t married, and no more she ought to be; if she’d had a husband like mine, who drank every day in the week and lived on my earnings.  He’s dead now, an’ I gave ’im a ’andsome tombstone with the text:  ‘Go thou and do likewise’ on it, being a short remark, lead letterin’ being expensive.  Ah well, as I allays say, ‘Flesh is grass with us all.’”

While the cook maundered on Thomas sat with his dull eyes fixed on the flushed face of Susan.  “What about the poisoning?” he demanded.

“It was this way,” said Susan.  “Father was working at some house in these parts—­”

“What!  Down here?”

“Yes, at Rexton, which was then just rising into notice as a place for gentlefolks.  He had just finished with a house when he came home one day with his wages.  He was taken ill and died.  The doctor said he had taken poison, and he died of it.  Arsenic it was,” explained Susan to her horrified audience.

“But why did he poison himself?” asked Geraldine.

“I don’t know:  no one knew.  He was gettin’ good wages, and said he would make us all rich.”

“Ah,” chimed in Thomas suddenly, “in what way, Susan?”

“He had a scheme to make our fortunes.  What it was, I don’t know.  But he said he would soon be worth plenty of money.  Mother thought someone must have poisoned him, but she could not find out.  As we had a lot of trouble then, it was thought father had killed himself to escape it, but I know better.  If he had lived, we should have been rich.  He was on an extra job down here,” she ended.