Albert did not answer. The housekeeper rose from her chair.
“There!” she exclaimed. “I don't know when I've set down for so long. Goodness knows I've got work enough to do without settin' around talkin'. I can't think what possessed me to do it this time, unless 'twas seein' you readin' that book.” She paused a moment and then said: “Albert, I--I don't want you and your grandpa to have any quarrels. You see--well, you see, I used to know your mother real well, and--and I thought an awful sight of her. I wish--I do wish when you and the cap'n have any trouble or anything, or when you think you're liable to have any, you'd come and talk it over with me. I'm like the feller that Laban tells about in his dog-fight yarn. This feller was watchin' the fight and when they asked him to stop it afore one or t'other of the dogs was killed, he just shook his head. 'No-o,' he says, kind of slow and moderate, 'I guess I shan't interfere. One of 'em's been stealin' my chickens and the other one bit me. I'm a friend to both parties,' he says. Course I don't mean it exactly that way,” she added, with a smile, “but you know what I do mean, I guess. WILL you talk things over with me sometimes, Albert?”
His answer was not very enthusiastic, but he said he guessed so, and Rachel seemed satisfied with that. She went on with her dusting, and he with his reading, but the conversation was the first of many between the pair. The housekeeper appeared to consider his having read her beloved Foul Play a sort of password admitting him to her lodge and that thereafter they were, in consequence, to be confidants and comrades. She never hesitated to ask him the most personal questions concerning his work, his plans, the friends or acquaintances he was making in the village. Some of those questions he answered honestly and fully, some he dodged, some he did not answer at all. Mrs. Ellis never resented his not answering. “I presume likely that ain't any of my business, is it?” she would say, and ask about something else.
On the other hand, she was perfectly outspoken concerning her own affairs. He was nearly overcome with hilarious joy when, one day, she admitted that, in her mind, Robert Penfold, the hero of Foul Play, lived again in the person of Laban Keeler.