urry, and the doctor swore and
ran off and I never heard the end of the sentence.

Well, I'm running on too long with these little odds and ends, as I'm
sure Margaret felt when I started telling her all about it. The truth
is I dreaded then, just as I dread now, to get at the real story and
look our conduct straight in the face. But I'll get on more quickly
now.

Old Mrs. Shipman died very quiet in her sleep and madam wasn't told,
which I didn't half like. The doctor was called out of those parts to
attend on his father, very suddenly, and Hodges managed the funeral and
all. It was plain to see he was a very trusty, silent fellow, devoted
to the family. I took as much off him as I could, and I was dusting
the drawing-room the day of the funeral, when I happened to pick up a
photograph in a silver frame of the same little fellow in the picture
the nurse had shown me--a dear little boy in short kilts.

"That's Master Robertson, isn't it?" I said, very carelessly, not
looking at him--I will own I was curious. He gave a start.

"Yes--yes, certainly, that's Master Robertson--if you choose to put it
that way," he said, and I saw him put his hand up to his eyes and his
mouth twitched and he left the room.

I didn't question him again, naturally; he was a hard man to cross and
very haughty, was William Hodges, and no one in the house but respected
him.

That day I saw Mrs. Childress for the first time. She was a sweet,
pretty thing, about my own age, but younger looking, fair, with grey
eyes. She was in heavy crepe and her face all fallen and saddened
like, with grief and hopelessness--I felt for her from the moment I saw
her. And all the more that I'd made up my mind what her trouble was: I
thought that the children were idiots, maybe, or feeble-minded, anyhow,
and so the property would go to the Jew in the end and that his family
were hating her for it! Folly, of course, but women will have fancies,
and that seemed to fit in with all I'd heard.

She'd been told that Shipman was away with some light, infectious
fever, and she took it very mildly, and said there was no need to get
any one in her place, at present.

"Hodges will attend to everything," she said, in her pretty, tired way;
"not that there's much to do--for one poor woman."

"Things may mend, ma'am, and you'll feel more like having some friends
about you, most likely, later on," I said, to cheer her a bit.

She shook her head sadly.

"No, no,