“Why is it that grown people always shut children out of their secrets? Seems as if we have a right to know what’s the matter when _we_ found the paper.”
Richard made no answer, for just then the sound of Belle’s crying came out to them. The windows of the cottage were all open and the grass plot between the windows and the swing being a narrow one the closed door was of little avail. It was very still there in the shady dooryard, so still that they could hear old Yellownose purr, asleep on the cushion in the wooden arm-chair beside the swing. The broken sentences between the sobs were plainly audible. It seemed so terrible to hear a grown person cry, that Georgina felt as she did that morning long ago, when old Jeremy’s teeth flew into the fire. Her confidence was shaken in the world. She felt there could be no abiding happiness in anything.
“She’s begging him not to tell,” whispered Richard.
“But I owe it to Danny,” they heard Uncle Darcy say. And then, “Why should I spare Emmett’s father? Emmett never spared me, he never spared Danny.”
An indistinct murmur as if Belle’s answer was muffled in her handkerchief, then Uncle Darcy’s voice again:
“It isn’t fair that the town should go on counting him a hero and brand my boy as a coward, when it’s Emmett who was the coward as well as the thief.”
Again Belle’s voice in a quick cry of pain, as sharp as if she had been struck. Then the sound of another door shutting, and when the voices began again it was evident they had withdrawn into the kitchen.
“They don’t want Aunt Elspeth to hear,” said Georgina.
“What’s it all about?” asked Richard, much mystified.
Georgina told him all that she knew herself, gathered from the scraps she had heard the day of Cousin Mehitable’s visit, and from various sources since; told him in a half whisper stopping now and then when some fragment of a sentence floated out to them from the kitchen; for occasional words still continued to reach them through the windows in the rear, when the voices rose at intervals to a higher pitch.