Mrs. Rebson clapped her gnarled old hands. "I've brought you to your senses," she cried, in her cracked voice, and with great triumph; "you will never doubt the Domestic Prophet again."
"Oh, no," answered Clarice, artfully. "Disgrace is coming, I fear, Nanny, and to Ferdy."
Mrs. Rebson's hands fell by her side, and she began to shake. "Disgrace, and to my darling boy," she whimpered. "Oh, Miss Clarice, what is it? What have you been doing?"
"It's not what I have been doing, but what I am about to do," said Miss Baird, resolutely. "Now, Nanny, if you want to save Ferdy from disgrace, from imprisonment, and perhaps from worse, you must hold your tongue about what I am going to tell you."
"I swear it on the Bible," whimpered Mrs. Rebson again. "Oh, my pretty boy--my sweet darling!" She began to cry in a senile manner.
Clarice knew that she could trust the old woman to be silent, as her affection for the unworthy Ferdy would have sealed her lips, even had she been threatened with the gallows to open them. If Clarice wanted to leave The Laurels secretly for her masquerade, and to return without her absence being known, it was absolutely necessary that she should trust the old woman. Therefore, she risked telling Mrs. Rebson all that she knew, and again impressed upon her, at the end of the confession, the absolute necessity--for Ferdy's sake--of silence.
Mrs. Rebson wept all the time and cried out at intervals, and exclaimed indignantly at Ferdy's enemies, and altogether conducted herself as a partisan of that shifty youth. "But I knew that the Domestic Prophet could not lie," cried Mrs. Rebson, "though I never thought he meant my precious lamb. Oh, Miss Clarice, what is to be done? They will hang and quarter my darling baby."
"No, no, Nanny. I can save him," said Clarice, soothingly.
"And you will--you will?"
"If you will consent to help me."