“Which I don’t believe, Mrs. Blamey,” she confided to her crony, “as it’s for the purpuss of curing that gal of her highstrikes, not if you was to tell me ever so! They’ve got some designs on the pore gal, mark my words! I never did think much of foreigners, for they’re a wicious, immoral lot, as ’ow could you expect anythink else from a nation as lives on frogs and sour wine. Not but what I ’olds the Sig-nor to be a quiet, and respectable gentleman,--least-ways ’e ’ave been so ’itherto, but that there German doctor with ’is long ’air, and his glasses, is enough to demoralise the best man living. We hadn’t nothink of these evenin’s alone with gals on pertence of curin’ their illnesses, before ’e came. The Sig-nor, ’e allays was a Mystery, and I’ve said as much before,--but a gentleman as is a Mystery with ’is books and ’is larning, is a very different thing from a gentleman as is a Mystery with gals. Hannah Stubbs, she’s hignorant and hidle, but she ain’t no more hill than you or me! We all ’ave our crosses in this life, Mrs. Blamey, but we don’t go and sit alone with gents to cure ’em, and I don’t like it, and that’s the fact!” “And I don’t blame you for one, Mrs. Battleby, ma’am,” replied her friend, “I never did like secret ways and never shall. Where there’s secrets and mysteries, I says, there’s summat wrong. And how you could have stood being locked out of your own room for so long, beats me! It’s a puffect insult to a lady of your position, the mistress of her own ’ouse, and left a widder with an independency, and though I’m only an ’umble and down-trodden wife, _I_ wouldn’t have stood it, not if I entered under their very eyes!” “But it was a sort of agreement-like, Mrs. Blamey, as the Sig-nor was to ’ave them three rooms to ’isself, and open or shut, they’re ’is. And ’ow could I enter when he keeps the key in ’is pocket, night and day.” “And ain’t there no other keys in the ’ouse as would fit that room, Mrs. Battleby, ma’am?” insinuated Mrs. Blamey. “Couldn’t you try anyways, or get another key fitted whilst the gentleman is hout, and so look into it without his knowing nothink about it.” “Well, so I could, to be sure!” exclaimed the other, “but I never thought of trying yet. But it seems to me a plain duty, Mrs. Blamey, to find out what they’re going to do with that there pore gal! Why! ’oo knows? that Doctor might be Jack the Ripper--which many said ’e was a doctor--and going to cut up Hannah into bits. And whatever should I say to ’er mother, which was my friend when we was little gals together, if her daughter disappeared under my roof and wasn’t never ’eard of again?” “It is your dooty, Mrs. Battleby, there’s no doubt of that, and if so be you’re afeared to enter the room by yourself, why, I’ll go with you as soon as look at you.”