“Well that is the treasure I meant, Mrs. Verwin.”
“And you never spoke a truer word, Mr. Alan. But I hope sir, and you, miss, as I didn’t do wrong in telling Mr. Batch—and a pleasant gentleman, though dark, he was too—about the peacock, for it’s a story as we all know for years and years and years. The luck of the Inderwicks! Why I heard my dear, dear pa as is dead these fifty years tell all about the blessed idol, so I thought t’was no harm to let Mr. Batch know as we’d something in Belstone he hadn’t got in his own country, wherever that may be, though they do say as it’s across channel somehow, and, if he——”
“You didn’t do wrong, Mrs. Verwin,” said Alan, striking in hastily, as he was anxious to get away with Marie, “and I merely asked about Mr. Bakche because he seemed to know something of Belstone.”
“He know. Now I ask you, sir, what can he know, staying but for one day, and only giving an eyewink at The Monastery where he——”
“Oh, he went there, did he?” asked Fuller, turning back at the door.
“Yes sir, he did, saying he’d like to see such a lovely place about which I’d told him such a queer story, for queer he said was the name for the luck of the peacock. I think Mr. Batch was one of them gents who write and who ask others for things as they can’t think of themselves, to——”
“Yes! Yes. Very probably, Mrs. Verwin. Thanks for answering my questions. I just did so because I chanced to meet this gentleman at Miss Grison’s.”
Alan, and Marie, who had taken scarcely any part in the conversation, managed to get outside the door, but were followed into the open by Mrs. Verwin, talking all the time, and curtseying at intervals with difficulty as she said good-bye. “For I do hope miss, and Mr. Alan, sir, as you’ll come in again, you not forgetting, miss, as I was kitchen-maid at The Monastery before Verwin came along to make me a happy bride; and so have the interest of the family at heart. Sitting on a throne is where you should be, miss, with all under your pretty feet as you will be when the peacock comes again to its own. And if that Grison person is dead, murdered they say with much blood, and serve him right, I hope as he’s sent back the peacock by post, if his sister—Louisa’s her name—ain’t got it, which is just as likely as not, taking into—— Well good-day, sir—good-day, miss—and bless you both for a nice-looking couple,” and Mrs. Verwin’s voice arose to a perfect scream, as the distance between her and the visitors increased. Not until they were on the verge of the green entering the lane which led to the vicarage, did the sound of her adieux die away.
“Marie,” said Alan seriously, “if you ever talk so much, I shall divorce you at once. Poor Verwin. He must have been glad to leave the world.”
“She always makes my head ache,” said Marie laughing.