"I don't want to go in the train, I want to go home," cried Maud, struggling to get off this strange woman's knee, "I want to go home. I want my mother," she sobbed.
"Hush, hush, my dear!" said Jane authoritatively, giving her an admonitory little shake. Then she looked apologetically at the kind lady again.
"She don't like leaving her mother—but there's a new baby sister at her home," she said glibly, "so she's coming home with me for a bit. But she's been spoilt and she don't like the idea of a new baby at all, and she ain't used to her auntie yet, and then there was the dogs on top of it all! Hush, my dear, hush, you're disturbing the ladies and gentlemen."
She was relieved when the whole carriage load turned out at the next station: she and Maud were left alone, and she had time to collect her thoughts.
Her triumph was complete! She had paid Pattie out thoroughly and she was satisfied. The opportunity for her vengeance had come to her and she had seized it without fear and without regret. How clever it was of her to have thought of that fiction about her sister and the new baby! It would do for Jim too, admirably, and he would never find out. She doubted if he even knew where in the outskirts of Old Keston her sister lived. He might even not know her married name! He would accept the story as she gave it, especially now that he was beginning to drink again. Well! he could drink as much as he liked, so long as he brought her her money and Harry's money regularly!
In a day or two she would take the child back to Old Keston, ostensibly to see its mother and the new baby, but in reality she would take it in the dark to its own gate, and leave it to make its own presence known.
In the meantime Pattie would be dismissed without a character, with a multitude of blame upon her head, if indeed she escaped so easily. They might think Pattie had stolen the child, and clap her into prison till she was found!
That would be vengeance indeed!