’I don’t like a marriage without smart and bridesmaids. Who is to be best man? I don’t believe old Taverner has a friend anywhere. Why—Honor, he’ll be my brother-in-law. That is a strange prospect. We’ll come up to Langford and see you every day, that you may not be dull. What are you going to do with Mrs. Veale? You are surely not going to keep her! Do you know, Honor, in the kitchen is a darling china spaniel, just like ours yonder on the mantel-piece, and he turns his head the opposite way to ours. I’m really glad you are going to marry Mr. Langford, because then the dogs will make a pair. They look so desolate, one here and the other there; they are ordained to keep company.’ Honor said nothing; she let her sister rattle on without paying heed to her tattle. ’Honor,’ said Kate, ’do you know whence Charles got the notion of putting the five-pound note under the dog? Guess.’ ’I cannot guess. It does not matter.’ ’Yes, it does matter. Charles got the notion from sweet Mrs. Veale. When I was at Langford looking for you, I saw that she used the dog as a place for putting things away that must not lie about. If you turn one of these china dogs on end, you will see that they are hollow. Well, Mrs. Veale had stuffed a packet of rat poison into the dog. You remember the man at the Revel who sold hones and packets of poison for mice and rats? Do you not recollect the board above his table with the picture on it of the vermin tumbling about as if drunk, and some lying on their backs dead? All his packets were in yellow paper with a picture on them in small like that on the board. It does not seem right to let poison lie about. I should lock it up if I had it; but Mrs. Veale is unlike everyone else in her appearance and in her talk, and, I suppose, in her actions. She keeps the yellow paper of rat-poison in the body of the china spaniel. I saw her take it thence, and stow it in there again. The place is not amiss. No one would dream of looking there for it. Who knows? Perhaps Mrs. Veale keeps her money in the same place. Charles may have seen that, and when he came here, and wanted to give us five pounds and escape thanks, he put it under the dog. That is reasonable, is it not, Honor?’ Honor did not answer. ’I declare!’ exclaimed Kate impatiently. ’You have not been attending to what I said.’ ’Yes, I have, Kate.’ ’What was I saying? Tell me if you can.’ ’You said that Mrs. Veale kept her money in a china dog on the chimneypiece.’ ’No, I did not. I said she kept rat-poison there in a yellow paper.’ ’Yes, Kate, so you did. She hides the poison there lest careless hands should get hold of it.’