"All right! Don't bother! The day has evidently come when even my own child turns against me." Molly was now on the verge of confession but at the fifty-ninth minute of the eleventh hour, Gran'pa overcame her. He deliberately placed the forefinger of his right hand in his mouth, took it out again and made the sign of a cross on his beard! Molly watched him, like a rabbit hypnotized by a snake. "I can't, Daddy!" she murmured, clutching spasmodically at my hair. "It's wicked to break a promise. . . ." And that is precisely where the matter stood for the next two days. My curiosity pulled one way and Molly's honor the other. I think the two forces were about equally matched. Luck, however, eventually gave my side the advantage--and the dread secret was suddenly out in all its startling nakedness. One evening, instead of returning home about six, as I had expected, I came back a couple of hours earlier. It was a cold, wet, miserable winter's day, and I naturally concluded that Molly and Gran'pa would be amusing themselves in front of a roaring fire. Imagine my surprise when Nanny said that they were in the tool-house outside--"making something." I hurried out to see what mischief was afoot; but there was no sign of them anywhere. "That's funny," I said to Nanny. "They're not there. Are you certain?" "Quite!" she answered, a little wearily. "They've been out since two o'clock." I went to the tool-house again, and even looked under and into things. Still no trace! "They must be indoors!" I said. Nanny looked at me wildly. The last few weeks had told on her, and I regret to say that she was not the woman she had been. "They went out at two," she reiterated, slowly and firmly. "And they've not come back into _this_ house again, or I should have seen them." "But--they must be somewhere!" I exclaimed, growing alarmed. "I'm sure they're old enough to look after themselves. I've got plenty to do without . . ." "Come, come, Nanny! Don't lose your temper!" "Lose my temper!" she cried, suddenly bursting the dams which had been holding back the accumulated floods of weeks of storm and tempest. "If you'd had to put up with half what I have, you'd pack up your things and go this very minute." "But why didn't you tell me of this before?" She snorted. "Tch! You are just as bad yourself! It's wicked, that's what I call it! The Almighty never intended us to live as long as your grandfather hopes to--and it's going against His laws to start cutting up all those poor little defenceless monkeys. It's disgusting. . . . To think of that old man capering about with those nasty little animal glands in him!" It was the first time I had ever seen dear old Nanny really lose her temper. I was simply spellbound. "Nanny . . ." I began.