"I was about in one place or another," she answered. "Part of the time I was in the onion-room. I went there for a handful of a particular herb I wanted, and stayed to pick the leaves from the stalks. And I was twice in the dining-parlour with my mistress, and stayed there pretty long each time."
"Talking to her?"
"No, sir, scarcely a word passed. My mistress rarely does talk much, to me or to any of us, and she seemed a good deal put out with the scene there was after dinner with Master Benja. Master George was put out, too, in his little way, and I stayed in the room soothing him. My mistress gave me a glass of wine then, and bade me drink the children's health. I went in later a second time, and stayed longer than the first, but I was waiting for Master George to awake that I might bring him up to the nursery, for it was getting the children's tea-time."
"But you did not bring him?"
"No, sir, he did not awake, and I got tired of waiting. I came straight upstairs, and went into my room, and I had not been there two minutes when Honour's cries broke out. I had not had time to strike a match and light any candle, and when I ran out of the room to see what was the matter, I had the match-box in my hand."
This seemed to be as comprehensive an account as Prance could give; and Mr. Pym himself saw no reason to doubt her. Honour did She had done nothing but doubt the woman ever since she came to the house. Honour believed her to be two-faced, thoroughly sly and artful; "a very cat in deceit." But in a calmer moment even Honour might not have brought herself to think that she would deliberately set fire to an innocent child, or close the doors on him that he might burn to death.
Again Mr. Pym went into the presence of Mrs. St. John, the two servants with him. She looked more ghastly than before, and she was sitting with Georgy on her lap, the child sick and trembling still. Mr. Pym mentioned to her what Honour said about the doors being fastened, asking if she could remember whether the one leading from her dressing-room was open in the morning She answered at once--and she spoke with the calmest and coldest self-possession, which seemed as a very contrast to her ghastly face--that she could not say with any certainty whether the dressing-room door was open that day or not. She remembered quite well that she had unbolted it that same morning while she was getting up, upon hearing the children's voices in the nursery. She had gone in to kiss them and wish them happiness on their birthday. Whether she had rebolted the door afterwards or not, she could not say. She generally rebolted it when she had been that way into the nursery, but it was possible she had not done so this morning. "I wish you would not ask these questions," she concluded, momentarily raising her eyes to Mr. Pym, for she had spoken with her face bent down, almost hidden.
"But I must ask them," said the surgeon.
"It frightens George so," she added. "See how he is shivering."
And in truth the child was shivering; shivering and trembling as one in an ague. Almost as his mother spoke, he raised himself with a cry, and was violently sick: and all Mr. Pym's attention had to be given to him.