But here Mrs. Blake got on her feet, and I must say for the woman,
if she hadn't got anything else she had got pluck.

'The game's up!' she says. 'It was well played, too, though I says
it. And you, you old fool!' she says to the parson, 'you have often
drunk tea with me, and gone away thinking how well-mannered I was,
and what a nice woman Mrs. Blake was, and how well she knew her
place, after you had chatted over half your parish with me. I know
you are the curiousest man in it, and as you and me is old friends,
I don't mind owning up just to please you. It'll save a lot of time
and a lot of money.'

'It's my duty to warn you,' said John, 'that anything you say may be
used against you.'

'Used against a fiddlestick end!' said Mrs. Blake. 'I married Robert
Sigglesfield in the name of William Alderton, and he sitting
trembling there, like a shrimp half boiled! He got ready the kind of
will we wanted instead of the one the old man meant, and gave it to
the old man to sign, and he signed it right enough.'

'And what about that arsenic,' says I,--'that arsenic I found in
your corner cupboard?'

'Oh, it was you took it, was it? You little silly, my neck's too
handsome for me to do anything to put a rope round it. Do you
suppose I've kept my complexion to my age with nothing but cold
water, you little cat?'