“No. Frank was asking for a pump. I was thinking of that more than of the beastly row in the garden.”
He was dismissed.
“Angèle Saumarez.”
The strangers present surveyed the girl with expectant interest. She looked a delightfully innocent child. She was attired in the dark dress she wore on the Monday evening. Her hat, gloves, and shoes were in perfect taste. No personality could be more oddly at variance with a village brawl than this delicate, gossamer, fairy-like little mortal.
She gave her evidence without constraint or shyness. Her pretty continental accent enhanced the charm of her manners. In no sense forward, she won instant approbation, and the general view was that she had drifted into an unpleasant predicament by sheer force of circumstances. The mere love of fun brought her out to see the fair, and her presence in the stackyard was accounted for by a girlish delight in setting boys at loggerheads.
But she helped the police contention by declaring that she heard Betsy say:
“I’ll swing for him.”
“I remember,” she said sweetly, “wondering what she meant. To swing for anybody! That is odd.”
“Might it not have been ‘for her’ and not ‘for him’?” suggested Mr. Stockwell.
“Oh, yes,” agreed Angèle. “I wouldn’t be sure about that. They talk queerly, these people. I am certain about the ‘swing’.”