“One minute,” she said, and disappeared into the house.
The members of the Anti-vivisection Society stood timorously in the porch, eyes fixed apprehensively upon Maria who stood motionless in the middle of the lawn looking as if butter would not melt in her mouth.
And the Outlaws still watched proceedings with interest through the Vicarage gate.
Then the Vicar’s wife came out staggering beneath the weight of a large pail.
“Disinfectant,” she explained shortly to her audience.
She approached Maria who was still standing in maiden meditation fancy free on the lawn, and with a sudden swift movement threw over her the entire pail of carbolic solution, soaking her from head to foot. Then Maria went mad. She leapt, she kicked, she reared. Dripping with carbolic she dashed round the lawn. She trampled over the flower beds. She broke two dozen flower pots and destroyed their contents. She kicked the greenhouse door in. She put her back hoof through the Vicar’s study window. She tried to climb an apple tree. She wrecked the summer-house....
The members of the local Anti-vivisection Society withdrew into the Vicarage and bolted all the doors. Mrs. Gerald Fitzgerald, after explaining that she wasn’t used to this sort of thing, went into hysterics that rivalled Maria’s outburst in intensity.
And still the Outlaws watched spellbound through the gate.
It was the Outlaws who first saw Mr. Simpkins’ housekeeper coming up the hill. She entered the Vicarage gate without looking at them. To her they were merely four inoffensive small boys and one inoffensive small girl looking through a gate. She little knew that they held the key to a situation that was becoming more complicated every minute. Mr. Simpkins’ housekeeper looked upset. She rang at the Vicarage front door and demanded to see the Vicar. The Vicar was out, but the Vicar’s wife, looking very pale and keeping well within the doorway and casting apprehensive glances round the garden, where Maria, temporarily breathless and exhausted, was standing motionless—the picture of mute patience—on the lawn, interviewed her. From within the house came the unmelodious strains of Mrs. Gerald Fitzgerald’s hysterics. Mr. Simpkins’ housekeeper said that Mr. Simpkins had vanished. He was nowhere to be found. The book he had been reading had been discovered in the field near the garden and his lab. was in such a state as to suggest a violent struggle, and Mr. Simpkins’ housekeeper suspected foul play of which Mr. Simpkins was the victim.
The Vicar’s wife, who was a woman of one idea, only pointed sternly to Maria and said: