Veronica saw visions of gunpowder. Who knows?--perhaps even she one
day will have gunpowder of her own! She looks up from her reverie:
a fairy godmamma in the disguise of a small boy--it was a small boy,
was it not?"
"Rather a nice little boy, he gave me the idea of having been,
originally," answered Robina; "the child, I should say, of well-to-do
parents. He was dressed in a little Lord Fauntleroy suit--or rather,
he had been."
"Did Veronica know how he was--anything about him?" I asked.
"Nothing that I could get out of her," replied Robina; "you know her
way--how she chums on with anybody and everybody. As I told her, if
she had been attending to her duties instead of staring out of the
window, she would not have seen him. He happened to be crossing the
field just at the time."
"A boy born to ill-luck, evidently," I observed. "To Veronica of
course he seemed like the answer to a prayer. A boy would surely
know where gunpowder could be culled."
"They must have got a pound of it from somewhere," said Robina,
"judging from the result."
"Any notion where they got it from?" I asked.
"No," explained Robina. "All Veronica can say is that he told her he
knew where he could get some, and was gone about ten minutes. Of
course they must have stolen it--even that did not seem to trouble
her."
"It came to her as a gift from the gods, Robina," I explained. "I
remember how I myself used to feel about these things, at ten.
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