"But what's that got to--" I began again.

"Oh, _I_ dunno," said Edward, impatiently. `I'm telling you
just what Bobby told me. He got suspicious, anyhow, but he
couldn't exactly call Bella's brother a liar, so Bobby escaped
for the time. But when he was in a hole next week, over a stiff
French exercise, and tried the same sort of game on his sister,
she was too sharp for him, and he got caught out. Somehow women
seem more mistrustful than men. They're so beastly suspicious by
nature, you know."

"_I_ know," said I. "But did the two--the fellow and the
sister--make it up afterwards?"

"I don't remember about that," replied Edward, indifferently;
"but Bobby got packed off to school a whole year earlier than his
people meant to send him,--which was just what he wanted. So you
see it all came right in the end!"

I was trying to puzzle out the moral of this story--it was
evidently meant to contain one somewhere--when a flood of golden
lamplight mingled with the moon rays on the lawn, and Aunt Maria
and the new curate strolled out on the grass below us, and took
the direction of a garden seat that was backed by a dense laurel
shrubbery reaching round in a half-circle to the house. Edward
mediated moodily. "If we only knew what they were talking
about," said he, "you'd soon see whether I was right or not.
Look here! Let's send the kid down by the porch to reconnoitre!"

"Harold's asleep," I said; "it seems rather a shame--"