"Telegrams!" Laura stared. "Oh, I know—Mr. Helbeck telegraphed to the station-master—but it must have come after I'd left the station."
"Aye—an t' station-master sent word back to Mr. Helbeck! Perhaps you doan't knaw onything aboot that!" exclaimed Polly triumphantly.
Laura turned rather pale.
"A telegram to Mr. Helbeck?"
Polly, surprised at so much ignorance, could not forego the sensation that it offered her. She bit her lip, but the lip would speak. So the story of the midnight telegram—as it had been told by that godly man Mr. Cawston of Braeside to that other godly man Mr. Bayley, perpetual curate of Browhead, and as by now it had gone all about the country-side—came piecemeal out.
"Oh! an at that Papist shop i' th' High Street—you remember that sickly-lukin fellow at the dance—they do say at they do taak shameful!" exclaimed Polly indignantly.
"What do they say?" said Laura in a low voice.
Polly hesitated. Then out of sheer nervousness she blundered into the harshest possible answer.
"Well, they said that Mr. Helbeck could do no different, that he did it to save his sister from knowing——"
"Knowing what?" said Laura.