On my way back I took the opposite side of the street from that I usually approached.  When I reached the little shop I paused.  First glancing at the various petty articles exposed in the window, I quietly stepped in.  A contracted and very low room met my eyes, faintly lighted by a row of panes in the upper half of the door and not at all by the window, which was hung on the inside with a heavy curtain.  Against two sides of this room were arranged shelves filled with boxes labeled in the usual way to indicate their contents.  These did not strike me as being very varied or of a very high order.  There was no counter in front, only some tables on which lay strewn fancy boxes of thread and other useless knick-knacks to which certain shopkeepers appear to cling though they can seldom find customers for them.  A woman stood at one of these tables untangling a skein of red yarn.  Behind her I saw another leaning in an abstracted way over a counter which ran from wall to wall across the extreme end of the shop.  This I took to be Bess.  She had made no move at my entrance and she made no move now.  The woman with the skein appeared, on the contrary, as eager to see as the other seemed indifferent.  I had to buy something and I did so in as matter-of-fact a way as possible, considering that my attention was more given to the woman in the rear than to the articles I was purchasing.

“You have a very convenient place here,” I casually remarked, as I handed out my money.  With this I turned squarely about and looked directly at her whom I believed to be Bess.

A voluble answer from the woman at my side, but not the wink of an eye from the one whose attention I had endeavored to attract.

“I live in the house opposite,” I carelessly went on, taking in every detail of the strange being I was secretly addressing.

“Oh!” she exclaimed in startled tones, roused into speech at last.  “You live opposite; in Mayor Packard’s house?”

I approached her, smiling.  She had dropped her hands from her chin and seemed very eager now, more eager than the other woman, to interest me in what she had about her and so hold me to the shop.

“Look at this,” she cried, holding up an article of such cheap workmanship that I wondered so sensible an appearing woman would cumber her shelves with it.  “I am glad you live over there,” for I had nodded to her question.  “I’m greatly interested in that house.  I’ve worked there as cook and waitress several times.”

I met her look; it was sharp and very intelligent.

“Then you know its reputation,” I laughingly suggested.

She made a contemptuous gesture.  The woman was really very good-looking, but baffling in her manner, as Mr. Robinson had said, and very hard to classify.  “That isn’t what interests me,” she protested.  “I’ve other reasons.  You’re not a relative of the family, are you?” she asked impetuously, leaning over the table to get a nearer view of my face.