'Up stairs, if you let me,' said Toole, with a flourish of his hand, and a gallant grin, 'and to my lady's chamber.'
'And did you hear the news?' demanded Miss Mag.
The doctor glanced over his shoulder, and seeing the coast clear, he was by this time close under the little scarlet geranium pots that stood on the window-sill.
'Miss Chattesworth, eh?' he asked, in a sly, low tone.
'Oh, bother her, no. Do you remember Miss Anne Marjoribanks, that lodged in Doyle's house, down there, near the mills, last summer, with her mother, the fat woman with the poodle, and the—don't you know?'
'Ay, ay; she wore a flowered silk tabby sacque, on band days,' said Toole, who had an eye and a corner in his memory for female costume, 'a fine showy—I remember.' 'Well, middling: that's she.'
'And what of her?' asked Toole, screwing himself up as close as he could to the flower-pots.
'Come up and I'll tell you,' and she shut down the window and beckoned him slily, and up came Toole all alive.
Miss Magnolia told her story in her usual animated way, sometimes dropping her voice to a whisper, and taking Toole by the collar, sometimes rising to a rollicking roar of laughter, while the little doctor stood by, his hands in his breeches' pockets, making a pleasant jingle with his loose change there, with open mouth and staring eyes, and a sort of breathless grin all over his ruddy face. Then came another story, and more chuckling.
'And what about that lanky long may-pole, Gerty Chattesworth, the witch?—not that anyone cares tuppence if she rode on a broom to sweep the cobwebs off the moon, only a body may as well know, you know,' said Miss Mag, preparing to listen.