"You've a longer," retorted Mrs. Gass. "Just wait till I've finished, girl. 'Twas a tolerable fine morning, and after that I went walking on, and struck off down by the Wheatsheaf. Packerton's wife was standing at the door with cherry ribbons in her cap, and I stopped to talk to her. _She_ brought up Dr. Rane; and lowered her voice as if it was high treason; asking me if I'd heard what was being said about his wife's not having died a natural death. I did give it the woman; and I think I frightened her. She acknowledged that she only spoke from a hint dropped by Timothy Wilks, and said she had thought at the time it couldn't have anything in it. But what _I_ have to say to you is this," continued Mrs. Gass to Jelly more emphatically, "whether it's Tim Wilks that's spreading the report, or whether it's Mother Green, they both had it in the first place from you." Jelly sat in discomfort. She did not like this. It is nothing to be charged with a fault when you are wholly innocent; but when conscience says you are partly guilty it is another thing. Jelly was aware that one night at Mother Green's, taking supper with that old matron and Timothy, she had so far yielded to the seductions of social gossip as to forget her usual reticence; and had said rather more than she ought. Still, at the worst, it had been only a word or two: a hint, not a specific charge. "I may have let fall an incautious word there," confessed Jelly. "But it was nothing anybody can take hold of." "Don't you make sure of that," reprimanded Mrs. Gass. "We are told in the sacred writings--which it's not well to mention in ordinary talk, and I'd only do it with reverence--of a grain of mustard seed, that's the least of all seeds when it's sown, and grows into the greatest tree. You remember Who it is says that, Jelly, so it's not for me to enlarge upon it. But I may say this much, girl, that that's an apt exemplification of gossip. You drop one word, or maybe only half a one, and it goes spreading out pretty nigh over the world." "I'm sure, what with the weight and worry this dreadful secret has been on my mind, almost driving me mad, the wonder is that I've been able to keep as silent as I have," put in Jelly, who was growing cross. Mrs. Gass resumed. "If the thing is what you think it to be---a dreadful secret, and it is brought to light through you, why, I don't know that you'd get blamed--though there's many a one will say you might have spared your mistress's son and left it for others to charge him. But suppose it turns out to be no dreadful secret; suppose poor Bessy Rane died a natural death of the fever, what then?--where would you be?" Jelly took off her black gloves as if they had grown suddenly hot for her hands. She said nothing.