“That's what you want to know?”
“Yes, dear—that's all. Surely, there can be no reason why your own dear mother should not know a little thing like that. Surely he—Mr. Galt—couldn't have told you not to tell me?”
The child was still for a moment. He folded his little arms over his knee, clinched his hands, and sat avoiding her insistent eyes.
“Wait!” he said, finally. “I want to go to Granny.”
“You want to go to Granny, and leave your mother?” she asked, deeply perplexed. .
“Just a minute,” he said, as he crawled over her and got down on the floor. “I'll be back. I'll be right back, mother, dear.”
“It is something you will tell her, but can't tell me!” Dora cried out, in half-assumed reproach. “Why, Lionel?”
“I'll be back,” he said, evasively. “There is no hurry.” And she heard the patter of his bare feet along the corridor to his grandmother's room.
Mrs. Barry always retired early, and she was now in her bed, but very wide awake. Something in the incident had set her to thinking on new lines. “Can it be? Can it be?” she kept asking herself, in great excitement. “Why didn't I think of it?”
“Granny!” she heard Lionel call out from the dark, doorway.