"After all," says she, "I'm not sure there isn't something queer about that woman." "Ah, all governesses are queer, ain't they?" says I; "but that ain't any sign they've done time or are in the habit of dosin' the coffeepot with arsenic. It's Aunt Martha has stirred all this mess up, and she'd make the angel Gabriel prove who he was by blowin' bugle calls." It was only next day, though, that we gets a report of what happens when Pinckney runs across this Sir Carpenter-Podmore at the club and lugs him out to dinner. He's an English gent Pinckney had known abroad. Comin' in unexpected that way, him and Madame Roulaire had met face to face in the hall, while the introductions was bein' passed out--and what does she do but turn putty colored and shake like she was havin' a fit! "Ah, Truckles?" says Podmore, sort of cordial. "No, no!" she gasps. "Roulaire! I am Madame Roulaire!" "Beg pardon, I'm sure," says Sir Carpenter, liftin' his eyebrows and passin' on. That was all there was to it; but everyone in the house heard about it. Course Aunt Martha jumps right in with the question marks; but all she gets out of Podmore is that he presumes he was mistaken. "Well, maybe he was," says I. "Why not?" "Then you haven't heard," says Sadie, "that Sir Carpenter was for a long time a Judge on the criminal bench." "Z-z-z-zing!" says I. "Looks kind of squally for the governess, don't it?" If it hadn't been for Pinckney, too, Aunt Martha'd had her thrown out that night; but he wouldn't have it that way. "I've never been murdered in my bed, or been fed on ground glass," says he, "and--who knows?--I might like the sensation." Say, there's more sides to that Pinckney than there are to a cutglass paperweight. You might think, with him such a Reggie chap, that havin' a suspicious character like that around would get on his nerves; but, when it comes to applyin' the real color test, there ain't any more yellow in him than in a ball of bluin', and he can be as curious about certain things as a kid investigatin' the animal cages. Rather than tie the can to Madame Roulaire without gettin' a straight line on her, he was willin' to run chances. And it don't make any difference to him how much Aunt Martha croaks about this and that, and suggests how dreadful it is to think of those dear, innocent little children exposed to such evil influences. That last item appeals strong to Mrs. Pinckney and Sadie, though. "Of course," says Geraldine, "the twins don't suspect a thing as yet, and whatever we discover must be kept from them." "Certainly," says Sadie, "the poor little dears mustn't know."