Miss Arnott was endeavouring to see through the situation in her mind, finding herself suddenly confronted by the unforeseen. It was impossible that the girl could mean what she seemed to mean; a raw country wench in her teens!
"Wilson, you seem to be behaving in a very strange manner, and to be forgetting yourself altogether. It is not strange that Evans has her doubts of you. Give me those things which you have in your hands at once."
"Begging your pardon, miss, I can't."
"They're not yours."
"No, miss, I know they're not."
"Then, if you're an honest girl, as you pretend, what possible reason can you have for refusing to give me my own property, which you have taken out of my drawer in a manner which is at least suspicious?"
"Because Jim Baker, he's my mother's cousin; and Mr Granger he's my uncle."
"What possible justification can that be for your trying to steal what belongs to me?"
Then it came out.
"My uncle he says to me, 'I don't believe Jim Baker done it--I don't believe he did anything to the chap beyond peppering him. Jim's no liar. 'Twill be a shame if they hang him. No, my girl,' Mr Granger says, 'it's my belief that they know more over at Exham Park than they pretend, or, at least, someone does. You keep your eyes wide open. We don't want to have no one hung in our family, specially for just peppering a chap. If you come across anything suspicious, you let me know and you let me have a look at it, if so be you can. Your mother don't want to have Jim Baker hung, nor more don't I.' Miss Arnott, you put them things in the drawer the time that you came home, the time that chap was murdered, the time that you was out in the woods till all hours. They haven't found the knife what did it yet, and this knife's all covered with blood; so's the things. I'm going to let Mr Granger see what I've got here, and tell him where I found them. If there's nothing wrong about them I'll have to suffer, but show them to him I will."