Then they went indoors, and had to submit to complaints on the part of Mrs. Cragg, who had been waiting ten minutes for her supper. Cragg received the complaints in his usual silence, and not much was said during the meal. Dot, the great talker, was in bed, sound asleep; and Cragg and Pattie had had their say. Mrs. Cragg wished to know whatever in the world they had been about; and she requested another time to be told beforehand, if they meant to go dawdling round after church. She wouldn't wait for them in that case—not she! Next time she should begin without them. Cragg and Pattie were willing that she should; but to have said so would have aroused her ire afresh. Later in the evening, when Pattie too had vanished, Cragg put a direct question to his wife. "Has anything gone wrong with you and Pattie to-day?" "Whatever should make you fancy that?" "She has been crying. I saw that at tea-time. And she said something this evening about wanting to find work for herself." "She says that whenever she's put out. It doesn't mean much." "I never can see that Pattie does get 'put out,' in the sense you mean. What has happened to 'put her out' to—day?" "How should I know, Mr. Cragg?" A little voice in Mrs. Cragg's mind tried to suggest that she should tell her husband the truth, but Mrs. Cragg refused to listen. "You are more likely than any one else to know. Pattie has told me about having destroyed her father's letters. She has not told me everything, though I cannot guess what she has held back. I thought you might know." Mrs. Cragg was silent. "I do not gather that she destroyed the letters to-day; but she seems to have come across two or three others unexpectedly, and for some reason to have felt bound to read them. Why should she have thought it right to read these, when she had burnt the others for fear of being persuaded to read them? Are you sure you cannot explain this to me?" Suspicion was written in Mr. Cragg's face. Pattie had not managed so cleverly as she had intended to manage. Mrs. Cragg took the bull by the horns, which she was capable of doing, as we have already seen. "It's no such tremendous mystery, after all," she said. "Pattie found that I'd read the letters, and then she said she must read them too." "You had read the letters!" "Yes, Mr. Cragg. I had read them! And I'd read them again, if it was all to come over fresh!" Mrs. Cragg tossed her head. "You read—without leave—letters that did not belong to you? You do not mean it!" Mrs. Cragg hardened herself against her husband's look.