e. She condescended, however, to ask one question.

"Who was on the moor last night?"

"Daniel," Helen said.

"Zebedee," said Miriam.

"Zebedee?" she said, pretending not to know to whom that name belonged.

"Dr. Mackenzie."

"Oh."

"The father of James and John," Miriam murmured.

"So he has children?" Mrs. Caniper went on with her superb assumption
that no one joked in conversation with her.

"Oh, I don't think so," Helen said earnestly. "He isn't married! Miriam
meant the gentleman in the Bible."

"I see." Her glance pitied Miriam. "But this was early in the evening.
Some one came in very late. Rupert, perhaps."

"No, it was me," Helen said.

"I," Mildred Caniper corrected.

"Yes. I."

"Did I hear voices?"

"Did you?" Helen returned in another tone and with an innocence that
surprised herself and revealed the deceit latent in the mouth of the
most truthful. It was long since she had been so near a lie and lying
was ugly: it made smudges on the world; but disloyalty was no better,
and though she could not have explained the debt, she felt that she owed
George silence. She had to choose. He had been like a child as he
fumbled over his apologies and she could not but be tender with a
child. Yet only a few seconds earlier she had thought he was the tinker.
Oh, why had Rupert ever told her of the tinker?

"I would rather you did not wander on the moor so late at night,"
Mildred Caniper said.

"But it's the best time of all."

"I would rather you did not."

"Very well. I'll try to remember."

A sign from Miriam drew Helen into the garden.

"Silly of you to come in by the front way. Of course she heard. If the
garden door is locked, you can climb the wall and get on to the scullery
roof. Then there's my window."

Helen measured the distance with her eye. "It's too high up."

"Throw up a shoe and I'll lower a chair for you."

"But--this is horrid," Helen said. "Why should I?"

Miriam's thin shoulders went up and down. "You never know, you never
know," she chanted. "You never know what you may come to."

"Don't!" Helen begged. She leaned against a poplar and looked mournfully
from the window to Miriam's face.

"No," Miriam said, "I've never done it. I only planned it in case of
need. It would be a way of escape, too, if she ever locked me up. She's
capable of that. Helen, I don't like this rejuvenation!"

"Don't," Helen said again.

"I haven't mended the sheets she gave me weeks ago."