of impatience buzzed round her.

"She doesn't want to tell."

"Mean brute!"

"Shouldn't wonder if it's too dashed shady."

"Didn't I SAY he was a bad 'un?"

"I bet you there's nothing to tell," said Tilly cockily, and turned up
her nose.

"Yes, there is," flung out Laura, at once put on the defensive, and as
she spoke she coloured.

"Look at her! Look how red she's got!"

"And after she promised--the sneak!"

"I'm not a sneak. I AM going to tell. But you're all in such a blooming
hurry."

"Oh, fire away, slow-coach!"

"Well, girls," began Laura gamely, breathing a little hard.--"But,
mind, you must never utter a word of what I'm going to tell you. It's a
dead secret, and IF you let on----"

"S' help me God!"

"Ananias and Sapphira!"

"Oh, DO hurry up."

"Well ... well, he's just the most--oh, I don't know how to say it,
girls--the MOST----"

"Just scrumptious, I suppose, eh?"

"Just positively scrumptious, and ..."

"And what'd he do?"

"And what about his old sketch of a wife?"

"Her? Oh"--and Laura squeezed herself desperately for the details that
WOULD not come--"oh, why she's just a perfect old ... old cat. And
twenty years older than him."

"What on earth did he marry her for?"

"Guess he's pretty sick of being tied to an old gin like that?"

"I should say! Perfectly MISERABLE. He can't think now why he let
himself be induced to marry her. He just despises her."

"Well, why in the name of all that's holy did he take her?"

Laura cast a mysterious glance round, and lowered her voice. "Well, you
see, she had LOTS of money and he had none. He was ever so poor. And
she paid for him to be a clergyman."

"Go on! As poor as all that?"

"As poor as a church-mouse.--But, oh," she hastened to add, at the
visible cooling-off of the four faces, "he comes of a MOST
distinguished family. His father was a lord or a baronet or something
like that, but he married a beautiful girl who hadn't a penny against
his father's will and so he cut him out of his will."

"I say!"

"Oh, never mind the father."

"Yes. Well, now he feels under an awful obligation to her, and all that
sort of thing, you know."

"And she drives it home, I bet. She looks a nipper."

"Is always throwing it in his face."

"What a ghoul!"

"He'd do just ANYTHING to get rid of her, but--Girls, it's a dead
secret; you must swear you won't tell."

Gestures of assurance were showered on her.

"Well, he's to be a Bishop