Whereupon, comforted and refreshed, he departed to find Peter.
Meanwhile P.C. Lee insisted that he must see the missis, for Ada’s friend was unshaken in her evidence, question they never so, and the four maids at Number 9 declared that they could not sleep comfortably in their beds unless the search-light of his bull’s-eye was thrown on every dusky corner of the house by P.C. Lee himself before he took his departure.
Ada’s friend was seated weeping in the front hall surrounded by the others, when the mistress, fetched by Ada herself, and accompanied by Tod and Peter, descended to hold parley with P.C. Lee.
“I can’t understand it, ma’am,” concluded the policeman, after a long explanation, continually interrupted by Ada’s friend with such interpolations as: “Oh, a hawful voice, that mournful”—“Them was the very words,” etc.
During this recital Tod and Peter crept further and further into the background, nudging each other in the ecstasy occasioned by such an unexpected tribute to their histrionic powers.
But their mother knows her Stevenson—and the twins—so before the narrative was nearly finished she turned swiftly upon them, demanding sternly:
“Which of you was it?”
“Young varmints!” said P.C. Lee to Ada’s friend, as he escorted her home; “I might ’a’ knowed it was them. ’Tain’t the fust time I’ve come across ’em, neither....”