"Then what do you mean? You shall tell me—if you don't," I went on, more and more excitedly, "I'll—" I hesitated—"I'll tell you what I'll do, I'll go straight downstairs, just as I am, in my nightgown, to Miss Ledbury herself, and tell her what you've said. I don't care if she beats me, I don't care what she does, but I will know."
Harriet tried to pull herself away.
"What a horrid temper you're getting, Gerry," she said complainingly. "Just when I hurried up to bed as quick as I could to talk to you. It's nothing, I tell you—only something I heard at home, and Emma said I wasn't ever to tell it you."
I clutched her more firmly.
"You shall tell me, or I'll do what I said."
Harriet looked really frightened.
"You'll not tell Emma, then? You promise?"
I nodded. "I promise."
"Well, then, it was only one day—papa was talking about somebody going to South America, and I said that was where your papa and mamma had gone, and papa asked your name, and then he said he had seen your papa at the bank, and it was a pity he hadn't been content to stay there. It was such a bad climate where he'd gone—lots of people got ill and died there, unless they were rich enough to live out of the town, and he didn't suppose any one who'd only been a clerk in the bank here would be that. And Emma said, couldn't your papa and mamma come back if they got ill, and he said if they waited till then it would be rather too late. There's some fever people get there, that comes all of a sudden. And besides that, your papa must have promised he'd stay two years—they always do."