"I beg your pardon, ma'am—your name 's Saunders—sell poultry?"
"At your service, sir. Spring chickens?" Poor people, whatever their grief, must sell their chickens, if they have any to sell.
"Thank you, ma'am; not at this moment. The fact is, that I call to make some inquiries Have not you lodgers here?"
Lodgers! at that word the expanding soul of Mrs. Saunders reclosed hermetically; the last warning of Waife revibrated in her ears this white neckclothed gentleman, was he not a rat?
"No, sir, I ha'n't no lodgers."
"But you have had some lately, eh? a crippled elderly man and a little girl."
"Don't know anything about them; leastways," said Mrs. Saunders, suddenly remembering that she was told less to deny facts than to send inquirers upon wrong directions," leastways, at this blessed time. Pray, sir, what makes you ask?"
"Why, I was instructed to come down to ———, and find out where this person, one William Waife, had gone. Arrived yesterday, ma'am. All I could hear is, that a person answering to his description left the place several days ago, and had been seen by a boy, who was tending sheep, to come down the lane to your house, and you were supposed to have lodgers (you take lodgers sometimes, I think, ma'am), because you had been buying some trifling articles of food not in your usual way of custom. Circumstantial evidence, ma'am: you can have no motive to conceal the truth."
"I should think not indeed, sir," retorted Mrs. Saunders, whom the ominous words "circumstantial evidence" set doubly on her guard. "I did see a gentleman such as you mention, and a pretty young lady, about ten days agone, or so, and they did lodge here a night or two, but they are gone to—"
"Yes, ma'am,—gone where?"