Harold's arms were unfolded now and the doubled fists were in his pockets, clenching themselves tighter and tighter as he advanced to Tom, who began to back toward the nurse for safety.
"It's a lie, Tom Tracy," Harold said. "Mr. Arthur does not take care of us. We do it ourselves, and have for ever so long. He did give us the house, but it ain't for you to twit me of that. Whose house is this, I'd like to know? It isn't yours, nor your father's, and there isn't a thing in it yours. It is all Mr. Arthur's."
"Well, we are to be his heirs—Jack, and Maude, and me. Mother says so," Tom stammered out, while Jerry, who had been looking intently, first at one boy, and then at the other, called out:
"Nein, nein," and struck her hand toward Tom.
"What does she mean by her 'Nine, nine,'" he asked of Miss Howard, who replied that she thought it was the German for 'No, no,' and that the child probably did not approve of him.
Tom knew she did not, and though she was only a baby, he felt chagrined and irritable. Had he dared, he would have struck Harold, but he was afraid of Miss Howard, and remembering it must be time for the inquest, he slipped from the room, whispering to Harold as he passed him:
"I'll thrash you yet."
"Let me know when you are ready," was Harold's taunting reply, as the door closed upon the discomfited Tom.
The inquest was a mere matter of form, for there was no doubt in any one's mind that the woman had been frozen to death, and she had no friends to complain that due attention had not been paid her. So after a few questions put to Mr. Tracy, and more to Harold, who was summoned from the nursery to tell what he knew, a verdict was rendered of "Frozen to death."