Mrs. Ayres reddened.  “I suppose you mean she has been talking about my Lucy,” said she.  “Well, I can tell you one thing, and I can tell Miss Farrel, too.  Lucy has never run after Mr. Allen or any man.  When she went on those errands to your house I had to fairly make her go.  She said that folks would think she was running after Mr. Allen, even if he wasn’t there, and she has never been, to my knowledge, more than three times when he was there, and then I made her.  I told her folks wouldn’t be so silly as to think such things of a girl like her.”

“Folks are silly enough for anything.  Of course, I knew better; you know that, Mrs. Ayres.”

“I don’t know what I know,” replied Mrs. Ayres, with that forceful indignation of which a gentle nature is capable when aroused.

Mrs. Whitman looked frightened.  She opened her lips to speak, when a boy came running into the yard.  “Why, who is that?” she cried, nervously.

“It’s Tommy Smith from Gray & Snow’s with some groceries I ordered,” said Mrs. Ayres, tersely.  She left the room to admit the boy at the side door.  Then Sylvia Whitman heard voices in excited conversation.  At the same time she began to notice that the road was filled with children running and exclaiming.  She herself hurried to the kitchen door, and Mrs. Ayres turned an ashy face in her direction.  At the same time Lucy Ayres, with her fair hair dishevelled, appeared at the top of the back stairs listening.  “Oh, it is awful!” gasped Mrs. Ayres.  “It is awful!  Miss Eliza Farrel is dead, and—­”

Sylvia grasped the other woman nervously by the arm.  “And what?” she cried.

Lucy gave an hysterical sob and sank down in a slender huddle on the stairs.  The grocer’s boy looked at them.  He had a happy, important expression.  “They say—­” he began, but Mrs. Ayres forestalled him.

“They say Lucinda Hart murdered her,” she screamed out.

“Good land!” said Sylvia.  Lucy sobbed again.

The boy gazed at them with intense relish.  He realized the joy of a coup.  He had never been very important in his own estimation nor that of others.  Now he knew what it was to be important.  “Yes,” he said, gayly; “they say she give her rat poison.  They’ve sent for the sheriff from Alford.”

“She never did it in the world.  Why, I went to school with her,” gasped Mrs. Ayres.

Sylvia had the same conviction, but she backed it with logic.  “What should she do it for?” she demanded.  “Miss Farrel was a steady boarder, and Lucinda ain’t had many steady boarders lately, and she needed the money.  Folks don’t commit murder without reason.  What reason was there?”

“School ain’t going to keep to-day,” remarked the boy, with glee.

“Of course it ain’t,” said Sylvia, angrily.  “What reason do they give?”

“I ’ain’t heard of none,” said the boy.  “S’pose that will come out at the trial.  Hannah Simmons is going to be arrested, too.  They think she knowed something about it.”