"You are not telling me a fib, I hope, about keeping up a clear fire?" said Corona sternly.
"If you like, I will open the door just a little: then you can see for yourself."
"Cer—tainly not. But if you've been looking after yourself properly, why did you sneeze just now?"
"'Sneeze'? I never sneezed."
Silence, for a moment—
"Somebody sneezed… I 'stinctly heard it," Corona insisted. "Now I come to think, it sounded—"
There was another pause while, with a question in her eye, she turned and stared at the casement. Then, as surmise grew to certainty, a little laugh bubbled within her. She stepped to the window.
"Good night, Uncle Copas!" she called out mischievously. No one answered from the moonlit cabbage-plot. In fact, Brother Copas, beating his retreat, at that moment struck his staff against a disused watering-can, and missed to hear her.
He objurgated his clumsiness and went on, picking his way more cautiously.
"The question is," he murmured, "how I'm to extort confession from Bonaday to-morrow without letting him suspect…"