“And whose Posey?” Mrs. Patience questioned looking up from her work with a gentle smile.
“Nobody’s,” was the mournful answer.
“And where is your home?” continued Mrs. Blossom.
“Nowhere,” answered Posey, a great sense of her forlornness rushing over her and filling her eyes with tears.
“Now, see here,” Miss Silence’s tone was brisk and incisive; “you want to tell the truth. Everybody has a surname and lives somewhere.”
“I have told the truth,” protested Posey hotly. “I haven’t anybody or any home anywhere.”
“But where have you been living?”
Now Posey had gathered from Ben Pancost’s manner that while he personally approved of her running away from Mrs. Hagood, he was doubtful of the impression it might make on others, and she had resolved to be very discreet and tell as little of that part of her story as possible. But her indignation at the implication of untruthfulness overmastered her prudence and she answered, “If you want to know where I’ve lived I can tell you. I’ve lived with a clairvoyant medium, and I’ve lived at the Refuge in Cleveland, and the last place I’ve lived was with a Mrs. Hagood in Horsham.”
“Why, Horsham is twenty miles from here.”
“I wish it was twenty million miles.”