upstairs to fetch a box in which Miss Emily was to carry away some
flowers from the garden.

It was when I was coming down the staircase that I saw Maggie. She
had carried the hall candlesticks, newly polished, to their places
on the table, and was standing, a hand on each one, staring into
the old Washington mirror in front of her. From where she was she
must have had a full view of Miss Emily in the library. And Maggie
was bristling. It was the only word for it.

She was still there when Miss Emily had gone, blowing on the mirror
and polishing it. And I took her to task for her unfriendly
attitude to the little old lady.

"You practically threw her muffins at her," I said. "And I must
speak again about the cups--"

"What does she come snooping around for, anyhow?" she broke in.
"Aren't we paying for her house? Didn't she get down on her bended
knees and beg us to take it?"

"Is that any reason why we should be uncivil?"

"What I want to know is this," Maggie said truculently. "What right
has she to come back, and spy on us? For that's what she's doing,
Miss Agnes. Do you know what she was at when I looked in at her?
She was running a finger along the baseboard to see if it was clean!
And what's more, I caught her at it once before, in the back hall,
when she was pretending to telephone for the station hack."