“I’ll go and see what Nellie looks like, when I ask her about that noise,” thought inquisitive Di.
Before, however, she was half way down the steep staircase, the sounds of Libbie’s voice conversing in agitated tones with her mistress, reached Diana. Though she had never been guilty in her life of eaves-dropping, she paused involuntarily now, to listen to what was being said. Mrs. Busson was evidently engaged inside the long, low wine-cellar, that ran under the staircase on which Di was standing, for her voice could only be heard now and again, speaking in answer to Libbie, who was talking to her in the doorway of the cellar.
“But good me! Ma’am,” Libbie was saying, “I tried my Sunday best to put her off, I promise you that.”
Mrs. Busson’s reply was inaudible.
“Turn a deaf ear! goodness me, if I’d turned half a hundred, it wouldn’t have been no good.”
Another inaudible reply from the cellar, then Libbie said, “Begging pardon, Ma’am, I can’t see how very great harm could be done by telling the truth; I can’t see if as how they were told exactly—”
This suggestion brought Mrs. Busson from the depths of the cellar.
“Tell them, did you say?” she cried very distinctly, “why bless the woman, she must be clean daft! Why, Libbie Kibblethwaite, don’t you understand boys and girls better than that? Why just the temptation to lay hands on the tons and tons of sweet stuff that must be in that room would be enough to tempt even Master Andrew to do something daring, and he isn’t so specially brave either.
“No, no, that room has been closed for over fifty years to my knowledge, and it shall never be opened whilst I’ve a voice in the matter. Tell them indeed! Go back to your cheese-making, Libbie and just remember to-day isn’t April Fool’s day.”
What Libbie may have replied was lost upon Di. For awakening to the risk that she was running of being discovered eaves-dropping, she flew back to the cheese-room and appeared to be wholly intent on counting the rows of “double duttons” on the well filled shelves, when the unsuspecting Libbie returned.