voice of warning, "Where did you get _them_ from, Sally?"

"Won 'em in a raffle," declared Sally.

"Oo, gambling!" reproved Mrs. Minto. "It's very wrong of young
girls----"

"Fiddlesticks! They're good chocolates, too," said Sally. "Don't make
yourself sick. It's a nuisance. Besides, I want some myself. I _am_
hungry. I've been working all the evening."

"Working!" grumbled her mother, incredulously.

"Well.... I ... _have_!" asserted Sally. "Perhaps you'd like me to get
Miss Summers to give me a certificate? You'll see. I shall have a bit
more money at the end of the week. Then you'll rub your eyes. You'll
apologise--I don't think! No, I'm a bad girl, wasting my time gadding
about. You never think of that when you get the money, or the money if
I'm late."

"Hush! Hush!" begged her mother. "I never said you was a bad girl.
You're a very good girl. But when you bring home a box of chocolates at
this hour--nine o'clock, and past--and say you won them in a raffle, and
you've been working--well!"

"What's that you're reading?" asked Sally, pointing to the small print.

Mrs. Minto straightened the sheet of newspaper, and held it up to the
light.

"It's an old paper," she said. "A trial."

"Lor! Murder?" Sally almost left her supper. "What's it all about?"

"Well ... oo, he must a been a wicked wretch. He poisoned the old lady.
He'd robbed her before he did it. Took all her money to give her an
annuity, and then he poisoned her."

"Poison! Whew! What sort of poison?"

"Flypapers, it was. Not them sticky ones, but the brown, what you put in
water. Got arsenic in them, they have."

"What's arsenic?"

Mrs. Minto looked over her magnifying glass at Sally in a bewildered
way.

"I don't know. It's poison. I never poisoned anybody. Not that I know
of."

"No," agreed Sally. She thought to herself: "She ought to have poisoned
dad. All of us." Melancholy seized her, a dreadful passing fit of
depression. Suddenly she longed for Toby. Aloud, she proceeded, more
seriously: "If it's in the flypapers, why don't we all get poisoned,
ma?"

"Well, it seems he soaked the papers, and drained off the water, with
the poison in it, and mixed it with her food--beef tea, and that. _She_
never noticed anything. She had awful pains, and diarrhoea, and was
sick; and then she died, poor thing."

"Hn," said Sally, reaching out for the chocolates. "I'll read it. I like
murders."

"Hush!" cried Mrs. Minto, in horror. "Read them-