Flynn looked at Jennie in sympathetic apology.
"All right now, Miss Follett. I guess my friend and me'll be goin' along—"
"You'll do just as you like about that," Lizzie interposed, with dignity; "but if you see my son before I do, tell him not to be sorry for what he's done, and above all not to think that I blame him. 'Thou shalt not muzzle the ox that treadeth out the corn.' When you do, the eighth commandment doesn't apply any longer."
Jennie followed her visitors to the doorstep. After her mother's reckless talk, they seemed like friends, as, indeed, at bottom of their kindly hearts they could easily have been. They brought no ill will to their job—only a conviction that if Teddy Follett was a thief, they must "get him."
"Does—does Mr. Collingham know that all this is going on?"
She asked her question in trepidation, lest these men, trained to ferret out whatever was most hidden, should be able to read her secret. It was Jackman who shouldered the duty of answering. He seemed more laconic than his colleague, and more literate.
"We don't trouble Mr. Collingham with trifles. If it was a big thing—"
So Jennie was left with that consolation—that it was not a big thing. How big it was she could only guess at, but, whatever the magnitude, she had no doubt at all but that it was "up to her." She got some inspiration from the little word "up." There was a lift in it that made her courageous.
Nevertheless, when she returned to the living room, finding her mother seated, erect and stately, in an armchair, with Pansy gazing at her with eyes of quenchless, infinite devotion, Jennie knew a qualm of fear.
"Oh, momma, wouldn't it be awful if Teddy had to go to jail?"