“You wouldn’t say that if you had seen her, Mr. Norris. She was mad—I mean mad, in the sense of demented—I don’t mean just angry. Well, anyway, I’ve told my story, now you can take it up. But I know, if you go there and face that nurse down, she’ll have to admit there’s some such state of things as I tell you of. She’d deny it to me, or to these ladies, but if a man went there and made her tell the truth, you’d soon find out! That’s why she had to be put out of her uncle’s house, when he decided to get a wife in there. He couldn’t bring a wife to a home with a girl like that in it. If it had not been for his approaching wedding, Mr. Tracy never would have put Alma out.”
“Posy,” Lora spoke gently, “are you willing to keep this secret a while longer? Are you willing to promise not to tell anybody about it until Mr. Moore says you may? If you will do this, you may feel that you have been of real help to us, but if you’re going to spread the story you will do incalculable harm.”
“No, I won’t tell if you don’t want me to.”
“That’s a good girl and we certainly don’t want you to. Don’t even tell Dick Hardy, will you?”
“Oh, gosh, no! He wouldn’t listen, anyway. He’s just my sheik, you know. He and I don’t talk about anything serious.”
“You’re a funny youngster, Posy,” and Lora smiled kindly at her, “but I’m going to trust your word in this thing. If you say you won’t tell, you won’t, will you?”
“No, ma’am, I sure won’t. And, I don’t s’pose you can get me, but I seemed to think the ends of justice couldn’t be served unless I coughed up my yarn.”
“Oh, Posy, you funny kid!” said Maud, laughing outright.
But Posy didn’t smile, nor, indeed, did I.
After a few more words she went off, and as she ran round the corner of the hedge I felt that doubtless she had dismissed the subject from her addle-pated head.