"Oh, no!" cried Mrs. Nipper, "above all things Nipper must know nothing about it! He would not understand!"
Young Mrs. Winter threw up her hands with a little gesture of despair, as much as to say, "I do not quite see, in that case, what is to be done in the matter!"
Then came the dread secret.
"I have paid them off myself. But oh—it is a great secret! Nipper would never forgive me—he thinks so much of that Hugh John Picton Smith!"
"Tell me all about it," purred Young Mrs. Winter. "You know I never speak again of things which have been told me in confidence!"
And, indeed, there was more of truth in the statement than the lady herself was aware of. For there were but few people in Edam so foolish as to tell Young Mrs. Winter even what their chickens had had for dinner!
"Oh, they shall not mock at me any more," said Mrs. Nipper, half crying with anger, half trembling at her own temerity.
The Meg Linwood of the back kitchen had not got over her former wholesome dread of correction. And in her secret heart she always feared (and perhaps also a little hoped) that one day Nipper, put out of patience by her tricks, would snatch up a stick and give her the same sort of moral lesson by which the late Mr. Linwood had recalled his family to a sense of their duty. "They shall not mock at me—yes, I know they do—because I was once a servant." (How little she knew either Hugh John or Elizabeth, if the accusation were made seriously!) "But I have shown them that they cannot tamper with me!"
"But how—tell me how you did it?" said Young Mrs. Winter, sinking her voice to a whisper.
"I found a letter," said Meg in a solemn whisper, and putting her mouth close to the ear of her listener, "yes, a letter—from that Carter girl in Paris to Hugh John Picton Smith."