‘Dear me!’ said Miss Georgina; ‘how strange! She never said anything about going out.’
The afternoon wore away, and Mrs. Smith did not return. Evening came and brought Jabez home to his tea, but it brought no Mrs. Smith, and, stranger still, it brought no Mr. Smith either.
‘Whatever can have become of the Smiths, Jabez?’ said Miss Georgina, when tea was cleared away, and the first floor was still empty.
‘I don’t know, my dear,’ answered Mr. Dick. ‘Perhaps they’ve bolted with the lead off the roof, or the washing out of the back garden.’
‘Don’t be a fool, Jabez. Can’t you talk seriously for a moment?’
‘What a fidget you are, Georgina! Let the Smiths alone, and they’ll come home, and bring their tails behind them.’
‘Keep your poetry for those who appreciate it,’ exclaimed Miss Georgina, tossing her head. ‘All I know is, if the Smiths don’t come home soon I shall think something’s wrong.’
There was something wrong indeed—how wrong, Miss Duck discovered later on, when a detective arrived from Scotland Yard ‘in consequence of information received, ’and in Miss Dick’s presence searched the rooms and found quite enough to prove that the late occupants were professional forgers and in league with a gang of robbers.
Miss Duck rushed off there and then and brought in Miss Jackson to stay with her till Jabez returned, declaring that she wasn’t going to be murdered in her bed for anyone, and picturing in vivid colours what might have happened to a poor unprotected female left alone as she often had been with these monsters of iniquity.
At the idea of her friend being murdered in her bed, Miss Jackson raised a dismal howl, and wept on Georgina’s bosom to such an extent that the latter must have been in imminent danger of rheumatics in the chest.