"Well, this is a nice how-do-you-do!" she exclaimed. "If I hadn't been an old silly, I might have had my suspicions, from her being so quiet. Well, well, well! Fancy her running away! I didn't think she 'ad it in her."
"Oh, there's a lot in Nancy," declared her champion.
"She kissed me something extra last night," resumed Mrs. Hicks, "and I suppose it was for good-bye. Lors! what will people say!"
"Nothing," replied Mayne emphatically. "They don't know anything about me, and they will think it only natural that she should—as Dawson suspects—have gone to her old nurse."
"And so it's—you know what I mean—to be a dead letter, and hushed up?"
"Yes."
Mrs. Hicks gave a shrill, unladylike whistle.
"Well, I declare! All the servants are 'in the know,'—but that doesn't count; folks don't ever believe 'bazaar' talk, and of course Hicks and I will 'old our tongues—you bet."
"That will be very kind of you, Mrs. Hicks—but——"
"But," nodding her head expressively, "if either of you go and marry other people, it will be bigamy, eh?"