“Nonsense! It will be all right as far as you are concerned.”
“I said it was Crew’s pills, all along, I did; it couldn’t have been anything else, sir. All the same, I wish I was dead.”
As good try to console a post, seemingly, as Ann Dovey. I went back to my standing-place between the Squire and Duffham. Hester Reed was being questioned then.
“Yes, sir, it were some weeks ago. My little boy was ailing, and I ran out o’ the house to Abel Crew, seeing the old gentleman go past the gate, and asked whether I might give him one of them there same pills, or whether it would hurt the child. Crew said I might give it freely; he said two even wouldn’t hurt him.”
“And did you give the pill?” asked the coroner.
“No, sir. He’s a rare bad one to give physic to, Gregory is, and I let him get well without it.”
“How old is he?”
“Turned of three, sir.”
“You are absolutely certain, Mrs. Reed, that these pills, from which you took out two to give the deceased children, were the very self-same pills you had from Abel Crew?”
“I be sure and certain of it, sir. Nobody never put a finger upon the box but me. It stood all the while in the corner o’ the press-shelf in the children’s bedroom. Twice a week when I got upon a chair to dust the shelf, I see it there. There was nobody in the house but me, except the little ones. My husband don’t concern himself with the places and things.”