Mysie opened a round pair of brown eyes, and said, ‘Oh! I did think people were never so silly out of poetry. There was Wilfrid in Hokeby, to be sure. He was stupid enough about Matilda; but do you mean that he is like that!’
‘Don’t, don’t, you dreadful child; I wish I had never spoken to you,’ cried Gillian, overwhelmed with confusion. ‘You must never say a word to any living creature.’
‘I am sure I shan’t,’ said Mysie composedly; ‘for, as far as I can see, it is all stuff. This Alexis never found out what Fergus was about with the stone, and so the mark was gone, and Cousin Rotherwood trod on it, and the poor little boy was killed; but as to the rest, Nurse Halfpenny would say it was all conceited maggots; and how you can make so much more fuss about that than about the poor child being crushed, I can’t make out.’
‘But if I think it all my fault?’
‘That’s maggots,’ returned Mysie with uncompromising common-sense. ‘You aren’t old enough, nor pretty enough, for any of that kind of stuff, Gill!’
And Gillian found that either she must go without comprehension, or have a great deal more implied, if she turned for sympathy to any one save Aunt Jane, who seemed to know exactly how the land lay.
CHAPTER XVI. — VANISHED
It seemed to be a very long time before the inquest was over, and Aunt Jane had almost yielded to her niece’s impatience and her own, and consented to walk down to meet the intelligence, when Fergus came tearing in, ‘I’ve seen the rock, and there is a flaw of crystallisation in it! And the coroner-man called me an incipient geologist.’
‘But the verdict?’