“Is Miss Panken flourishing?”
“Quite,” laughed Scott, “The other one came to grief—Mabel Falkner.”
“Did she! I thought she seemed rather nice.”
“She was a very nice little girl indeed, as modest as Polly Panken is impudent. The one could take care of herself; the other couldn’t—or didn’t. Well, Mabel fell into trouble, and of course lost her post. Madam Lizzie immediately gave her house-room, setting Bevere, who forbade it, at defiance. What with grief and other disasters, the girl fell sick there; had an illness, and had to be kept I don’t know how long. It put Bevere out uncommonly.”
“Is this lately?”
“Oh no; last year. Lizzie—— By the way,” broke off Scott, stopping again and searching his pocket, “I’ve got a note from her for Bevere. You can give it him.”
The words nearly seared away my senses. A note from Lizzie to Bevere! “Why, then, she must know he is here!” I cried.
“You don’t understand,” quietly said Scott, giving me a note from his pocket-book. “A day or two ago, I met Lizzie near the Bell-and-Clapper. She——”
“She is well enough to be out, then!”
“Yes. At times she is as well as you are. Well, I met her, and she began to give me a message for her husband, which I could not then wait to hear. So she sent this note to me later, to be delivered to him when we next met. I had not time to go to him yesterday, and here the note is still.”