‘Hold your tongue. I’ve looked after you and managed your house for more than twenty years, and I’m not going to desert you now. I will protect you against designing minxes with the last drop of my blood.’
Miss Duck waved her teaspoon in the air at an imaginary minx, and brought it down on her cup with a clang, as though she were striking her shield with a sword, and inviting the foes of Jabez Duck to come on.
Jabez grew very uncomfortable, and fidgeted about on his chair. The eagle eye of Georgina was reading his soul. He knew it was. He felt that the name of Susan Turvey was written on his guilty brow, and that Georgina was spelling it out.
He plucked up a little determination, and inquired, in a quavering voice, if his sister would kindly drop conundrums and come to the point.
Yes, she would come to the point. There was an old frump of a housekeeper at Mr. Egerton’s—that was the point.
‘Oh, indeed!’ said Jabez. ‘And pray who has been telling you this fine cock-and-bull story?’
‘You yourself,’ answered Miss Georgina triumphantly.
Herewith she put her hand into her pocket, and drew forth a crumpled piece of paper, which she handed to him.
‘I found this in your trousers pocket.’
Jabez rose in wrath. The cloud on his brow quite obscured the skin for a moment.