“She may have. I am not acquainted with her.”
“Hasn’t she sent in things at different times to you?”
Henriette’s throat began to form the word no; then she remembered the shortcake, she remembered the roses, she remembered her oath, and she choked. “I don’t know much about it; perhaps she may have,” said she.
“That will do,” said Wickliff. “Call Miss Mysilla Beaumont.” Wickliff’s respectful bearing reassured the agitated spinster. He wouldn’t detain her a moment. He only wanted to know had neighborly courtesies passed between the two houses. Yes? Had Mrs. Armstrong been a kind and unobtrusive neighbor?
“Oh yes, sir; yes, indeed,” cried poor Mysie.
“Were you yourself much disturbed by the organ?”
“No, sir,” gasped Mysie, with one tragic glance at her sister’s stony features. She knew now what Jeanie Deans must have suffered.
“That will do,” said Wickliff.
Then a procession of witnesses filed into the narrow space before the railing. First the employer of the elder Armstrong gave his high praise of his foreman as a man and a citizen; then came the neighbors, declaring the Armstrong virtues—from Mrs. Martin, who deposed with tears that Mrs. Armstrong’s courage and good nursing had saved her little Willy’s life when he was burned, to Mrs. O’Toole, an aged little Irish woman, who recited how the brave young Peter had rescued her dog from a band of young torturers. “And they had a tin can filled with fire-crackers, yer Honor (an’ they was lighted), tied to the poor stoompy tail of him; but Petey he pulled it aff, and he throwed it ferninst them, and he made them sorry that day, he did, for it bursted. He’s a foine bye, and belongs to a foine family!”