There was a painful silence.
H.O. looked, "There, what did I tell you?" at the rest of us.
Then Alice said, "We others had nothing to do with it. It was Dora's doing." I suppose she said this because we did not mean to tell Mrs. Bax anything about it, and if there was any brickiness in the act we wished Dora to have the consolement of getting the credit of it.
But of course Dora couldn't stand that. She said—
"Oh, Mrs. Bax, it was very wrong of me. It wasn't my own money, and I'd no business to, but I was so sorry for the little boy and his mother and his darling baby-brother. The money belonged to some one else."
"Who?" Mrs. Bax asked ere she had time to remember the excellent Australian rule about not asking questions.
And H.O. blurted out, "It was Miss Sandal's money—every penny," before we could stop him.
Once again in our career concealment was at an end. The rule about questions was again unregarded, and the whole thing came out.
It was a long story, and Mrs. Red House came out in the middle, but nobody could mind her hearing things.
When she knew all, from the plain living to the pedlar who hadn't a license, Mrs. Bax spoke up like a man, and said several kind things that I won't write down.