Bessy Rane: A Novel

by Mrs. Henry Wood

"That plum-pudding receipt on Mrs. Gass's parlour carpet."

"Well, I never!" returned Molly after a pause of surprise. "What is it to you, Jelly, if I did?"

Now the girl only spoke so by way of retort; in a spirit of banter. Jelly, hardly believing her ears, accepted it as an admission that she had dropped it. And so the two went floundering on, quite at cross-purposes.

"Don't stare at me like that, Molly Green. I want a straightforward answer. Did it drop from your skirts?"

"It didn't drop from my hands. As to staring, it's you that's doing that, Jelly, not me."

"Where had you picked up the receipt? Out of Mr. Edmund North's room?"

"Out of Mr. Edmund North's room!" echoed Molly in wonder. "Whatever should have brought me doing that?"

"It was the night he was taken ill."

"And if it was! I didn't go a-nigh him."

A frightful thought now came over Jelly, turning her quite faint. What if the girl had gone to her aunt Green's that night and picked the paper up there? In that case it could not fail to be traced home to Timothy Wilks.