“Well, I know. It isn't any matter how I know.”
“Very well. Suppose I did turn a tramp away from the door—what of it?”
“Oh, nothing; nothing in particular. Only you lied to him.”
“I didn't! That is, I—”
“Yes, but you did; you lied to him.”
I felt a guilty pang—in truth, I had felt it forty times before that tramp had traveled a block from my door—but still I resolved to make a show of feeling slandered; so I said:
“This is a baseless impertinence. I said to the tramp—”
“There—wait. You were about to lie again. I know what you said to him. You said the cook was gone down-town and there was nothing left from breakfast. Two lies. You knew the cook was behind the door, and plenty of provisions behind her.”
This astonishing accuracy silenced me; and it filled me with wondering speculations, too, as to how this cub could have got his information. Of course he could have culled the conversation from the tramp, but by what sort of magic had he contrived to find out about the concealed cook? Now the dwarf spoke again:
“It was rather pitiful, rather small, in you to refuse to read that poor young woman's manuscript the other day, and give her an opinion as to its literary value; and she had come so far, too, and so hopefully. Now wasn't it?”