s of
pride. Thus is the nimbleness of women's wit measured once and for
all. They need two seconds if they are to do the thing comfortably.

"Never to have telled me, and you behaved so grandly!" she cried, with
adoring glances that were as a carpet on which he strode pompously
into the house.

"It wasna me that did it; it was him," said Corp, and even then he
feared that he had told too much. "I kenna what you're speaking
about," he added loyally.

"Corp," she answered, "you needna be so canny, for the laddie is in
the town, and Mr. Sandys has confessed all."

"The whole o't?"

"Every risson."

"About the glove, too?"

"Glove and all," said wicked Gavinia, and she continued to feast her
eyes so admiringly on her deceived husband that he passed quickly from
the gratified to the dictatorial.

"Let this be a lesson to you, woman," he said sternly; and Gavinia
intimated with humility that she hoped to profit by it.

"Having got the glove in so solemn a way," he went on, "it would have
been ill done of me to blab to you about it. Do you see that now,
woman?"

She said it was as clear as day to her. "And a solemn way it was," she
added, and then waited eagerly.

"My opinion," continued Corp, lowering his voice as if this were not
matter for the child, "is that it's a love-token frae some London
woman."

"Behear's!" cried Gavinia.

"Else what," he asked, "would make him hand it to me so solemn-like,
and tell me to pass it on to her if he was drowned? I didna think o'
that at the time, but it has come to me, Gavinia; it has come."

This was a mouthful indeed to Gavinia. So the glove was the property
of Mr. Sandys, and he was in love with a London lady, and--no, this is
too slow for Gavinia; she saw these things in passing, as one who
jumps from the top of a house may have lightning glimpses through many
windows on the way down. What she jumped to was the vital question,
Who was the woman?

But she was too cunning to ask a leading question.

"Ay, she's his lady-love," she said, controlling herself, "but I
forget her name. It was a very wise-like thing o' you to speir the
woman's name."

"But I didna."

"You didna!"

"He was in the water in a klink."

Had Gavinia been in Corp's place she would have had the name out of
Tommy, water or no water; but she did not tell her husband what she
thought of him.

"Ay, of course," she said pleasantly. "It was after you helped him out
that he telled you her nam