“Of course you couldn’t hear anything of the message?” inquired Anthony.
Mrs. Hogarth shook her head. “No, sir, I couldn’t ... and I ain’t the sort to listen hard!”
Anthony accepted her denial with a disarming smile.
“Of course not, Mrs. Hogarth, Mr. Cunningham and I are fully alive to that. Did she appear agitated at all?”
Mrs. Hogarth pursed her lips and pondered for a moment.
“No, sir, I wouldn’t say that. Yet she had a look on her that’s hard to describe.” She pondered still more.
“Yes,” said Anthony, encouragingly, “perhaps I can help you ... eh? She looked pleased with herself, didn’t she?”
Mrs. Hogarth knocked the counter with the palm of her hand.
“That’s it, sir, that’s it ... her face was hot, as you might say, flushed you might call it, with pleasure. That was a extryordinary good guess, sir.” Mrs. Hogarth was in the seventh heaven of delight—she had assisted this friend of Sir Charles Considine, she felt sure. She would now fire her last shot, her crowning triumph.
“There’s one other little thing, sir, now I come to think of it,” she murmured with more than a suggestion of an apology in her tone, “I wasn’t listening to the conversation in any way, sir, I know my place here better than to do that, but I’ve just an idea that I did just manage to hear the last sentence the hussy spoke.” She breathed heavily as she looked at us.