From the postoffice Josie went to a ticket office. After consulting a time table she bought a ticket, engaged a berth for that night, ran in to see Alice Chisholm and tell her that she must leave town immediately, giving her directions where to forward mail and repeat telegrams. "Ask Miss Denton to keep my room for me indefinitely. I'll pay whatever it is. I may need it soon. Just tell her urgent business keeps me from the city. "Tell me, Alice--you seem to know the ins and outs of Atlanta people-- was there ever an affair between Mrs. Waller and Chester Hunt?" "He was supposed to have courted her before she married Stephen Waller, but it was a well-known fact that she did not like him. It was astonishing to some of their acquaintances that Stephen Waller should have made his stepbrother his executor because of Mrs. Waller's evident dislike of him. Mr. Waller was devoted to him, however, and perhaps his wife never let him know how she felt about Chester Hunt." Josie went back to her place of service. Armed with a hot iron she reported to the master. "I bane come to press your back, sir." "Can I trust you not to burn me?" the suffering man queried. Josie wondered whether he could or not. "I'd like to make such a big blister on him he could not put on a shirt for weeks to come," she thought, but she put on an especially stupid expression and said dully, "I never have burnt anything yet, sir." Gently she pressed the aching back with an iron just hot enough. "Gee, that's fine! Do you know, Miss Josie Larson, there are some things better than beauty and better than brains at times?" "Yah! Being a good laundress," declared Josie, "but that bane take more sense than you think, sir." "Well, perhaps. Anyhow, you are a good girl. I'd like to do something nice for you--give you something for being so kind to me. What would you like," "I'd like to have the bowls with the rabbits and the chickuns on them." "Take them! Take them, girl! Take them and welcome," he laughed, "ghosts and all!" When Josie packed her suitcase she carefully put in the two bowls. From a drawer in the library table she purloined a photograph that she had discovered there when she had dusted the room in the morning, trying to make it a bit more presentable before the master came down to breakfast. It was a picture of a handsome, soldierly looking man in an officer's uniform, with two children snuggling up to him. The children were Polly and Peter--some years younger but the little Wallers without doubt. The officer must be their father. "Stealing is not my forte," Josie said to herself, "but I fancy this photograph will never be missed by the present occupant of this house. I may need this in my business." Josie arranged an attractive supper tray for the sick man.