“You’re a bad, wicked, deceitful girl!” exclaimed Mrs. Clover hotly.  “I don’t believe a word you said, not a word!  You’re going to the bad as fast as ever you can, and you know it, and you don’t care, and I’m sure I don’t care!  Somebody ought to box your ears soundly, miss.  I wouldn’t have such a temper as yours not for untold money.  And when you want a friend, and haven’t a penny in the world, don’t come to me, because I won’t look at you, and won’t own you.  And remember that, miss!”

Again Polly laughed, this time in high notes of wrathful derision.  Before the sound had died away Mrs. Clover was at the foot of the staircase, where Gammon and Mrs. Bubb awaited her.

“It’s all a make-up,” she declared vehemently.  “I won’t believe a word of it.  She’s made fools of us—­the nasty, ill-natured thing!”

Trembling with excitement she was obliged to sit down in the parlour, whilst Mrs. Bubb hovered about her with indignant consolation.  Gammon, silent as yet, stood looking on.  As he watched Mrs. Clover’s countenance his own underwent a change; there was a ruffling of the brows, a working of the lips, and in his good-humoured blue eyes a twinkling of half-amused, half-angry determination.

“Look here,” he began, thrusting his hands into his side pockets.  “You’ve come all this way, Mrs. Clover, to see Polly, and see her you shall.”

“I don’t want to, Mr. Gammon!  I couldn’t—­”

“Now steady a bit—­quiet—­don’t lose your head.  Whether you want to see her or not, I want you to, and what’s more you shall see her.  If Polly’s trying to make fools of us she shan’t have all the fun; if she’s telling the truth she shall have a fair chance of proving it; if she’s lying we’ll have a jolly good try to make her jolly well ashamed of herself.  See here, Mrs. Bubb, will you do as I ask you?”

“And what’s that, Mr. Gammon?” asked the landlady, eager to show her spirit.

“You go up to Polly’s room, and you say this:  ‘Miss Sparkes,’ you say, ’you’ve got to come downstairs and see your aunt.  If you’ll come, quite well and good; if you won’t, I just got to tell you that the lock on your door is easy forced, and expense shan’t stand in the way.’  Now you just go and say that.”

Mrs. Bubb and Mrs. Clover exchanged glances.  Both were plainly impressed by this masculine suggestion, but they hesitated.

“I don’t want to make an upset in the house,” said Mrs. Clover.  “There isn’t a word of truth in what she said; I feel sure of that, and it’s no use.”

“If you ask me,” Gammon interposed, “I’m not at all sure about that.  It seems to me just as likely as not that she has come across Mr. Clover—­just as likely as not.”

Angry agitation again took hold of Polly’s aunt, who was very easily swayed by an opinion from Mr. Gammon.  The landlady, too, gave willing ear to his words.

“Do you mean,” she asked, “that we should really break the door open?”