“I never liked to say what I really thought of that girl,” were her concluding words.  “Now your eyes are opened.  Of course you’ll never see her again?”

“Why, mother?” asked Bertha.  “I’m very glad she has married Mr. Franks.  I always hoped she would, and felt pretty sure of it.”

“And you mean to be friends with them both?”

“Why not?—­But don’t let us talk about that,” Bertha added good-humouredly.  “I should only vex you.  There’s something else I want to tell you, something you’ll really be amused to hear.”

“Your ideas of amusement, Bertha—­”

“Yes, yes, but listen.  It’s about Mr. Jollyman.  Who do you think Mr. Jollyman really is?”

Mrs. Cross heard the story with bent brows and lips severely set.

“And why didn’t you tell me this before, pray?”

“I hardly know,” answered the girl, thoughtfully, smiling.  “Perhaps because I waited to hear more to make the revelation more complete.  But—­”

“And this,” exclaimed Mrs. Cross, “is why you wouldn’t go to the shop yesterday?”

“Yes,” was the frank reply.  “I don’t think I shall go again.”

“And, pray, why not?”

Bertha was silent.

“There’s one very disagreeable thing in your character, Bertha,” remarked her mother severely, “and that is your habit of hiding and concealing.  To think that you found this out more than a week ago!  You’re very, very unlike your father. He never kept a thing from me, never for an hour.  But you are always full of secrets.  It isn’t nice—­it isn’t at all nice.”

Since her husband’s death Mrs. Cross had never ceased discovering his virtues.  When he lived, one of the reproaches with which she constantly soured his existence was that of secretiveness.  And Bertha, who knew something and suspected more of the truth in this matter, never felt it so hard to bear with her mother as when Mrs. Cross bestowed such retrospective praise.

“I have thought it over,” she said quietly, disregarding the reproof, “and on the whole I had rather not go again to the shop.”

Thereupon Mrs. Cross grew angry, and for half an hour clamoured as to the disadvantage of leaving Jollyman’s for another grocer’s.  In the end she did not leave him, but either went to the shop herself or sent the servant.  Great was her curiosity regarding the disguised Mr. Warburton, with whom, after a significant coldness, she gradually resumed her old chatty relations.  At length, one day in autumn, Bertha announced to her that she could throw more light on the Jollyman mystery; she had learnt the full explanation of Mr. Warburton’s singular proceedings.

“From those people, I suppose?” said Mrs. Cross, who by this phrase signified Mr. and Mrs. Franks.  “Then I don’t wish to hear one word of it.”

But as though she had not heard this remark, Bertha began her narrative.  She seemed to repeat what had been told her with a quiet pleasure.