The seine-maker, like most persons whose thoughts are far away and
who do not keep in touch with what happens immediately about them,
was always taciturn. But when his coffee had been poured and he had
emptied it into his saucer, to let it cool, it struck him that he
ought to say something.

"To-day there's bound to be a letter from Glory Goldie," he said.
"I feel it in my bones."

"We had greetings from her only a fortnight ago in her letter to
the senator," Katrina reminded him.

The seine-maker blew into his saucer a couple of times before
saying anything more. Whereupon he again found it expedient to
bridge a long silence with a word or so.

"Maybe some blessing has come to the girl, and it has given her
something to write about."

"What kind of blessing might that be?" scouted Katrina. "When
you've got to drudge as a servant, one day is as humdrum as
another."

The seine-maker bit off a corner of a sugar-lump and gulped his
coffee. When he had finished an appalling stillness fell upon the
room.

"It might be that Glory Goldie met some person in the street," he
blurted out, his half-dead eyes vacantly staring at space. He
seemed not to know what he was saying.