"Wrong you? I've no wish to wrong you," said Mrs. Crowl. "I should like to hang you."
"Don't talk of such ugly things," said Denzil, touching his throat nervously.
"Well, what have you been doin' all this time?"
"Why, what should I be doing?"
"How should I know what became of you? I thought it was another murder."
"What!" Denzil's glass dashed to fragments on the floor. "What do you mean?"
But Mrs. Crowl was glaring too viciously at Mr. Crowl to reply. He understood the message as if it were printed. It ran: "You have broken one of my best glasses. You have annihilated threepence, or a week's school fees for half the family." Peter wished she would turn the lightning upon Denzil, a conductor down whom it would run innocuously. He stooped down and picked up the pieces as carefully as if they were cuttings from the Koh-i-noor. Thus the lightning passed harmlessly over his head and flew toward Cantercot.
"What do I mean?" Mrs. Crowl echoed, as if there had been no interval. "I mean that it would be a good thing if you had been murdered."
"What unbeautiful ideas you have, to be sure!" murmured Denzil.
"Yes; but they'd be useful," said Mrs. Crowl, who had not lived with Peter all these years for nothing. "And if you haven't been murdered what have you been doing?"