what do you think he returned home with this morning?'
'What was it, Peter?' I said, stooping over him to cover my fear of what was coming. Peter looked more knowing than ever. Then he sidled up to me, and laid his head down in my lap.
'It was a stocking,' said Mrs. Ipplethwaite, 'a lady's black silk stocking.'
'How extraordinary,' I laughed.
'I wonder whose,' put in Berengaria meditatively; 'there can't be many of them in Slumpanugger.'
I think Peter's instinct must have told him I was getting nervous. He lifted his head, and looked up at me earnestly with his serious monkey face as if he wanted to tell me that I could rely upon him to act as a gentleman, and never say a word.
'How he could have got it I can't think,' said Mrs. Ipplethwaite.
'There can't possibly be more than four ladies here,' murmured Berengaria musingly, 'who possess such things.'
I felt that Berengaria's curiosity was quite indecent. It was narrowing things down a bit too much. I offered up again much gratitude that that stocking was not emblazoned with my name, as that dreadful pockethandkerchief had been on board ship.
'It's perfectly extraordinary,' Mrs. Ipplethwaite remarked to me again, 'how Peter has taken to you at first sight. I've never known him take so much to anyone the first time he's met them before.'
