"Children are much sharper than their elders give them credit for. I was ten years of age when Miss Laurence left and quite old enough to see through her designs."
"Miss Laurence? Was that her name, Amy?"
"Yes. She afterwards married a man called Jenner, a clerk in papa's office, and we saw no more of her as I had gone to school. A very good thing, too," went on Mrs. Chisel, with an air of offended virtue. "My mother never liked her. And she did turn out badly, after all, murdering her husband. I can only say it was a mercy it was not papa."
"Why should it have been papa?" asked Ruth, with a beating heart.
Mrs. Chisel tossed her head and observed that men were always men. "Papa is as good as the best of them," she added, "but all the same, he is a son of Adam, like the rest. And when an artful minx---- Ah, well, it does not do to talk of these things."
"I see," said Ruth, taking the bull by the horns. "Miss Laurence was pretty, papa was weak, and mamma----"
"Ruth!" screamed her sister, stopping her ears. "I will not hear these things! How can you speak so of papa? Pretty, indeed! I never thought her pretty. If you like--oh, yes, she would have made a fool of papa if mamma had not dismissed her."
"I thought she left here to get married?"
"You may think what you like," Mrs. Chisel said with dignity. "No one can say that I talk about the weaknesses of my parents. All the same, Mrs. Jenner, as she now is, was a minx, And made eyes at papa. I saw something of that, and I heard more. Though I was a child, I was not a fool, Ruth. Oh, it was as well that she left Hollyoaks, I can tell you. What an escape for poor, dear papa!"
And more than this Mrs. Chisel would not say. But Ruth had gathered that Miss Laurence had been an apple of discord in the house. From all that she had heard, in the strange way in which sharp children do hear things, Ruth had come to think that her mother had been more than a trifle jealous. Doubtless, if Amy's story could be believed, she had hated Mrs. Jenner for her beauty and had got her out of the house. She anxiously awaited the return of Mr. Cass from Bordeaux.