It was not till I had talked to
Veronica for a quarter of an hour, and had told her that you would
most certainly communicate with the police, and that she would have
to convince a judge and jury of the truth of her story, that I got
any sense at all out of her."
"What was the sense you did get out of her?" I asked.
"Well, I am not sure even now that it is the truth," said Robina--
"the child does not seem to possess a proper conscience. What she
will grow up like, if something does not happen to change her, it is
awful to think."
"I don't want to appear a hustler," I said, "and maybe I am mistaken
in the actual time, but it feels to me like hours since I asked you
how the catastrophe really occurred."
"I am telling you," explained Robina, hurt. "She was in the kitchen
yesterday when I mentioned to Harry's mother, who had looked in to
help me wash up, that the kitchen chimney smoked: and then she said-
-"
"Who said?" I asked.
"Why, she did," answered Robina, "Harry's mother. She said that very
often a pennyworth of gunpowder--"
"Now at last we have begun," I said. "From this point I may be able
to help you, and we will get on. At the word 'gunpowder' Veronica
pricked up her ears. The thing by its very nature would appeal to
Veronica's sympathies. She went to bed dreaming of gunpowder. Left
in solitude before the kitchen fire, other maidens might have seen
pictured in the glowing coals, princes, carriages, and balls.
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