"He had a scheme to make our fortunes. What it was, I don't
know. But he said he would soon be worth plenty of money.
Mother thought someone must have poisoned him, but she could
not find out. As we had a lot of trouble then, it was thought
father had killed himself to escape it, but I know better. If
he had lived, we should have been rich. He was on an extra
job down here," she ended.

"What was the extra job?" asked Thomas curiously.

Susan shook her head. "Mother never found out. She went to
the house he worked on, which is near the station. They said
father always went away for three hours every afternoon by an
arrangement with the foreman. Where he went, no one knew. He
came straight from this extra job home and died of poison.
Mother thought," added Susan, looking round cautiously, "that
someone must have had a wish to get rid of father, he knowing
too much."

"Too much of what, my gal?" asked Mrs. Pill, with open mouth.

"Ah! That's what I'd like to find out," said Susan
garrulously, "but nothing was ever known, and father was
buried as a suicide. Then mother, having me and my four
brothers, married again, and I took the name of her new
husband."

"Then your name ain't really Grant?" asked Geraldine.

"No! It's Maxwell, father being Scotch and a clever workman.