"Shall I tell him?" she pleaded at last to her abettor.
"It's not fair to worry her like this, George!" he exclaimed.
"All right! Don't bother! The day has evidently come when even my own child turns against me."
Molly was now on the verge of confession but at the fifty-ninth minute of the eleventh hour, Gran'pa overcame her. He deliberately placed the forefinger of his right hand in his mouth, took it out again and made the sign of a cross on his beard! Molly watched him, like a rabbit hypnotized by a snake.
"I can't, Daddy!" she murmured, clutching spasmodically at my hair. "It's wicked to break a promise. . . ."
And that is precisely where the matter stood for the next two days. My curiosity pulled one way and Molly's honor the other. I think the two forces were about equally matched. Luck, however, eventually gave my side the advantage—and the dread secret was suddenly out in all its startling nakedness.
One evening, instead of returning home about six, as I had expected, I came back a couple of hours earlier. It was a cold, wet, miserable winter's day, and I naturally concluded that Molly and Gran'pa would be amusing themselves in front of a roaring fire. Imagine my surprise when Nanny said that they were in the tool-house outside—"making something."
I hurried out to see what mischief was afoot; but there was no sign of them anywhere.
"That's funny," I said to Nanny. "They're not there. Are you certain?"
"Quite!" she answered, a little wearily. "They've been out since two o'clock."