Molly Green seemed quite bewildered by the address--as well she might be. "Drop what?" she asked. "That plum-pudding receipt on Mrs. Gass's parlour carpet." "Well, I never!" returned Molly after a pause of surprise. "What is it to you, Jelly, if I did?" Now the girl only spoke so by way of retort; in a spirit of banter. Jelly, hardly believing her ears, accepted it as an admission that she had dropped it. And so the two went floundering on, quite at cross-purposes. "Don't stare at me like that, Molly Green. I want a straightforward answer. Did it drop from your skirts?" "It didn't drop from my hands. As to staring, it's you that's doing that, Jelly, not me." "Where had you picked up the receipt? Out of Mr. Edmund North's room?" "Out of Mr. Edmund North's room!" echoed Molly in wonder. "Whatever should have brought me doing that?" "It was the night he was taken ill." "And if it was! I didn't go a-nigh him." A frightful thought now came over Jelly, turning her quite faint. What if the girl had gone to her aunt Green's that night and picked the paper up there? In that case it could not fail to be traced home to Timothy Wilks. "Did you call in at your aunt's that same evening, Molly Green?" "Suppose I did?" retorted Molly. "And how _dare_ you call in there, and bring--bring--receipts away with you surreptitious?" shrieked Jelly in her anger. Molly Green stooped to pick up the hammer lying at her feet, speaking quietly as she did so. Some noise was beginning to be heard outside, caused by Turtle's men getting a piano into the house, and Phillis talking to them. "I can't think what you are a-driving at, Jelly. As to calling in at aunt's, I have a right to do it when I'm out, if time allows. Which it had not that night, at any rate, for I never went nowhere but to the druggist's and Mrs. Gass's. I ran all the way to Dallory, and ran back again; and I don't think I stopped to speak to a single soul, but Timothy Wilks." Jelly's spirits, which had been rising, fell to wrath again at the name. "You'd better say you got it from _him_, Molly Green. Don't spare him, poor fellow; whiten yourself." Molly was beginning to feel just a little wrathful in her turn. Though Jelly was a lady's-maid and superior to herself with her red arms and rough hands, that could be no reason for attacking her in this way. "And what if I did get it from him, pray? A plum-pudding prescription's no crime." "But a copy of an anonymous letter _is_," retorted Jelly, the moment's anger causing her to forget caution. "Don't you try to brazen it out to me, girl." "WHAT?" cried Molly, staring with all her eyes. But in a moment Jelly's senses had come back to her. She set herself coolly to remedy the mischief. "To think that my mind should have run off from the pudding-receipt to that letter of poor Mr. Edmund's! It's your fault, Molly Green, bothering my wits out of me! Where _did_ you pick up the paper? There. Answer that; and let's end it."