“Who?”
“You know well enough. The old man. Lord, what a mess!”
“Please let me go, Jim,” said Ellen. “Now look here, I know absolutely nothing except what I have told you, and I want to go home.”
“Ellen!”
“Well?”
“Can you keep a secret?”
“Of course I can, Jim!” She met his dark gaze squarely.
“Well, rather than have you spreading a piece of damnable gossip over the village— Of course you would have told everybody.”
“You mean about meeting the old man? But won’t everybody know? If he goes out and talks to people as he did to me?”
“You haven’t told me what he said.”