“Neither did I!” she cried, indignantly. “Did you ever know me to do any spying?”
“Certainly not. But you said——”
“I said ‘If you happen to.’ You don’t suppose I hid and listened deliberately? I was down on my hands and knees planting tulip bulbs, and the thick hedge was between us. That’s how it happened, and why, she never dreamed anybody was near her. I didn’t even hear her come in that part of the yard until I heard her speaking right by me, on the other side of the hedge. Please don’t be quite so quick to think your wife would be willing to spy on another woman.”
“I didn’t,” Mr. Dodge protested, hastily. “What did she say to the chauffeur?”
“That,” his wife replied, severely, “is something you’ll never hear from me!”
“From whom shall I hear it, then?”
“I’ve just told you how you might hear it,” she said, plying her needle and seeming to give it all her attention.
“But I can’t spend my time in the tulip bed, Lydia.”
“That’s not what I meant. I said, ‘If her husband ever makes such a fuss that it gets into the papers.’ ”
“If he does, I might find out what she said to the chauffeur?”