“Listen to me! Look at me!” she gasped. “Where did you get the arsenic or lead or whatever it was?”
“Arsenate of lead!” corrected the testator, mildly now. “Dead-deadly poison—poisons you some if it only trickles over your body!”
Penny’s cheeks lost a good deal of their color which ebbed away into a hard little island of red under each cheek-bone.
“Where did you get it?” she repeated.
“In the woods over there, beyond the creek, where the trees and the berries and the ground an’ all were sprayed with it.”
“Were you alone? Was anybody with you?”
“Kenjo was. He’s another Scout. He’s gone off over the dunes to try an’ find a house, or camp, to get something to give me. But I guess it’s no use!” with a deep gulp that in a girl would have been a collapsing sob.
“Mercy!” The fingers of Penelope’s left hand distractedly clawed her cheek; her eyes, sharpened to a glittering point, pierced the victim’s face as she thrust her own near to it.
Suddenly she wheeled and changed her tactics.
“Here! let me see the will you’re making: ‘To my brother Basil I leave my push-mobile, stern wheel is off, he can fix it, to my chum Snuffy I leave my mandolin, it has two strings busted, b-but——’” read Penelope aloud in high, strained tones which exploded in a quavering shriek.