Johnson stroked his chin reflectively.
"It couldn't have been last night," he replied, after a few moments' consideration. "I was in Dunscar then. It must 'a been the night afore that. Aye; I did see one of you young ladies go up that lime tree. I remember it, because she climbed that smart you'd have thought she was a boy. In at the window she gets, and I watches her and thinks it's well to have young limbs. It's not much climbing you'll do when you're nigh sixty, and stiff in the joints with rheumatism besides!"
"What was she like?" enquired Janie eagerly.
"Had she long, dark hair?" added Lettice.
"Nay, it was fair hair. There was a light in the room, so as she comes back through the window I sees her as plain as I sees you now. I knows her in a minute. It was the young lady as every Sunday morning pesters my life out of me to cut her a rose for her buttonhole: Miss Taylor, I think she's called."
"Flossie!" exclaimed Janie. "I know she always begs for roses."
"Then it was Flossie!" said Lettice. "I had an uneasy feeling in the back of my mind all the time that it was she—it looked like her figure. It seemed too bad to suspect her, though, when I had absolutely no proof."
"There can be little doubt about it now."
"Shall we go straight to Miss Maitland, at once?"
"I don't know. I'm not sure if it wouldn't be better to ask Flossie herself about it. She may be able to explain it; and, at any rate, I think we ought to warn her before we say anything, and then we shan't seem to have told tales behind her back."