"Just see whether that girl have shut the door fast before I begin," suggested Mrs. Gass. "It won't do to have ears listening to me."
Jelly went, saw the door was closed, came back and sat down again. She noticed that Mrs. Gass looked keenly at her, as if studying her face before speaking.
"Jelly, what is it that you have been saying about Dr. Rane?"
The question was so unexpected that Jelly did not immediately answer it. Quite a change, this, from an offer of a nice situation.
"I've said nothing," she replied.
"Now don't you repeat that to me. You have. And it would have been a'most as well for you that you had cut your tongue out before doing it."
"I said--what I did--to you, Mrs. Gass. To nobody else."
"Look here, Jelly--the mischiefs done, and you'd a great deal better look it full in the face than deny it. There's reports getting up about Dr. Rane, in regard to his wife's death, and no mortal woman or man can have set 'em afloat but you. This morning I was in North Inlet, looking a bit after them scamps of workmen that won't work, and won't let others work if they can help it: and after I had given a taste of my mind to as many of 'em as was standing about, I stepped into Mother Green's. She has the rheumatics--and he has a touch of 'em. Talking with her of one thing and another, we got on to the subject of Dr. Rane and the tontine; and she said two or three words that frightened me; frightened me, Jelly; for they pointed to a suspicion that the doctor had sacrificed his wife to get it. I pretended to understand nothing--she didn't speak out broad enough for me to take it up and answer her--and it was the best plan not to understand----"
"For an old woman, Mother Green has the longest tongue I know," interrupted Jelly.
"You've a longer," retorted Mrs. Gass. "Just wait till I've finished, girl. 'Twas a tolerable fine morning, and after that I went walking on, and struck off down by the Wheatsheaf. Packerton's wife was standing at the door with cherry ribbons in her cap, and I stopped to talk to her. She brought up Dr. Rane; and lowered her voice as if it was high treason; asking me if I'd heard what was being said about his wife's not having died a natural death. I did give it the woman; and I think I frightened her. She acknowledged that she only spoke from a hint dropped by Timothy Wilks, and said she had thought at the time it couldn't have anything in it. But what I have to say to you is this," continued Mrs. Gass to Jelly more emphatically, "whether it's Tim Wilks that's spreading the report, or whether it's Mother Green, they both had it in the first place from you."