to her, 'Maria, you just stay put. I'll get the tea and everything. Mr. Hick is out, so there's no dinner to get. I'll just stay with you till your poor legs are better.' "
The children listened, and each of them thought tie same thing. "If Mrs. Minns was stuck in a chair all the evening with rheumatism,, then she couldn't have fired the cottage!"
"And didn't poor Mrs. Minns get up at all out of the rocking-chair?" asked Daisy. "Not till you really knew there was a fire, I mean?"
"No - Maria just stayed put," said Mrs. Jones. "It wasn't till me nose told me there really was something burning terrible that Maria got up. I went to the kitchen-door and sniffed - and then I went out into the garden -and I saw the flare down at the bottom there. I shouted out, 'There's a fire, Maria!' and she turned as white as a sheet. 'Come on, Maria!' I says, 'We've got to do something.' But poor Maria,, she can't get out of her chair, she's so stuck!"
The children drank all this in. It certainly could have been nothing to do with Mrs. Minns. If she had been so "stuck" with rheumatism, she wouldn't have been likely to rush around setting fire to cottages. And anyway her sister was with her all the time. It was quite plainly nothing to do with Mrs. Minns. That was another Suspect crossed off!
Mrs. Minns opened the kitchen door and came in, looking angry. She had been upstairs to take off her milk-drenched dress. She glared at Lily., and then looked in surprise at the three children.
"Well, Maria," said Mrs. Jones, "how's the rheumatics?"
"Good afternoon, Mrs. Minns," said Daisy. "We came to bring a fish-head for Sweetie."
Mrs. Minns beamed. She was always touched when any one did anything for her precious cat. "That's nice of you," she said. "My rheumatism's better," she said to her sister. "Though what it will be like after being drenched with milk, I don't know. Really, things are coming
to a pretty pass when that girl Lily throws milk all over me."