Alas, neither the present chronicler nor Mistress Plodgitt got any
further information from the prudent Carmen, and must fain speculate
upon certain facts that were already known.
Mistress Carmen's little room was opposite to Thatcher's, and once or
twice, the doors being open, Thatcher had a glimpse across the passage
of a black-haired and a sturdy, boyish little figure in a great blue
apron, perched on a stool before an easel, and on the other hand, Carmen
had often been conscious of the fumes of a tobacco pipe penetrating her
cloistered seclusion, and had seen across the passage, vaguely enveloped
in the same nicotine cloud, an American Olympian, in a rocking chair,
with his feet on the mantel shelf. They had once or twice met on the
staircase, on which occasion Thatcher had greeted her with a word or two
of respectful yet half-humorous courtesy,--a courtesy which never really
offends a true woman, although it often piques her self-aplomb by the
slight assumption of superiority in the humorist.
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