“Listening,” defiantly replied Mrs. Jones.  “And now I’ll just tell out what I’ve had in my head this long while, Mr. Gum, and know the reason of Nancy’s slighting me in the way she does.  What secret has she and Mary Mirrable got between them?”

“Secret?” repeated the clerk, whilst his wife gave a faint cry, and Mirrable turned her calm face on Mrs. Jones.  “Have they a secret?”

“Yes, they have,” raved Mrs. Jones, giving vent to her long pent-up emotion.  “If they haven’t, I’m blind and deaf.  If I have come into your house once during the past year and found Mrs. Mirrable in it, and the two sitting and whispering, I’ve come ten times.  This evening I came in at dusk; I turned the handle of the door and peeped into the best parlour, and there they were, nose and knees together, starting away from each other as soon as they saw me, Nance giving one of her faint cries, and the two making believe to have been talking of the weather.  It’s always so.  And I want to know what secret they have got hold of, and whether I’m poison, that I can’t be trusted with it.”

Jabez Gum slowly turned his eyes on the two in question.  His wife lifted her hands in deprecation at the idea that she should have a secret:  Mirrable was laughing.

“Nancy’s secret to-night, when you interrupted us, was telling me of a dream she had regarding Lord Hartledon, and of how she mistook Mr. Elster for him the morning he came down,” cried the latter.  “And if you have really been listening at the shutters since you went out, Mrs. Jones, you should by this time know how to pickle walnuts in the new way:  for I declare that is all our conversation has been about since.  You always were suspicious, you know, and you always will be.”

“Look here, Mrs. Jones,” said the clerk, decisively; “I don’t choose to have my shutters listened at:  it might give the house a bad name, for quarrelling, or something of that sort.  So I’ll trouble you not to repeat what you have done to-night, or I shall forbid your coming here.  A secret, indeed!”

“Yes, a secret!” persisted Mrs. Jones.  “And if I don’t come at what it is one of these days, my name’s not Lydia Jones.  And I’ll tell you why.  It strikes me—­I may be wrong—­but it strikes me it concerns me and my husband and my household, which some folks are ever ready to interfere with.  I’ll take myself off now; and I would recommend you, as a parting warning, to denounce Pike to the police for an attempt at housebreaking, before you’re both murdered in your bed.  That’ll be the end on’t.”

She went away, and Clerk Gum wished he could denounce her to the police.  Mirrable laughed again; and Mrs. Gum, cowardly and timid, fell back in her chair as one seized with ague.

Beyond giving an occasional dole to Mrs. Jones for her children—­and to tell the truth, she clothed them all, or they would have gone in rags—­Mirrable had shaken her cousin off long ago:  which of course did not tend to soothe the naturally jealous spirit of Mrs. Jones.  At Hartledon House she was not welcomed, and could not go there; but she watched for the visits of Mirrable at the clerk’s, and was certain to intrude on those occasions.