“Well, I am not sure even now that it is the truth,” said Robina—“the child does not seem to possess a proper conscience. What she will grow up like, if something does not happen to change her, it is awful to think.” “I don’t want to appear a hustler,” I said, “and maybe I am mistaken in the actual time, but it feels to me like hours since I asked you how the catastrophe really occurred.” “I am telling you,” explained Robina, hurt. “She was in the kitchen yesterday when I mentioned to Harry’s mother, who had looked in to help me wash up, that the kitchen chimney smoked: and then she said—” “Who said?” I asked. “Why, she did,” answered Robina, “Harry’s mother. She said that very often a pennyworth of gunpowder—” “Now at last we have begun,” I said. “From this point I may be able to help you, and we will get on. At the word ‘gunpowder’ Veronica pricked up her ears. The thing by its very nature would appeal to Veronica’s sympathies. She went to bed dreaming of gunpowder. Left in solitude before the kitchen fire, other maidens might have seen pictured in the glowing coals, princes, carriages, and balls. Veronica saw visions of gunpowder. Who knows?—perhaps even she one day will have gunpowder of her own! She looks up from her reverie: a fairy godmamma in the disguise of a small boy—it was a small boy, was it not?” “Rather a nice little boy, he gave me the idea of having been, originally,” answered Robina; “the child, I should say, of well-to-do parents. He was dressed in a little Lord Fauntleroy suit—or rather, he had been.” “Did Veronica know how he was—anything about him?” I asked. “Nothing that I could get out of her,” replied Robina; “you know her way—how she chums on with anybody and everybody. As I told her, if she had been attending to her duties instead of staring out of the window, she would not have seen him. He happened to be crossing the field just at the time.” “A boy born to ill-luck, evidently,” I observed. “To Veronica of course he seemed like the answer to a prayer. A boy would surely know where gunpowder could be culled.” “They must have got a pound of it from somewhere,” said Robina, “judging from the result.” “Any notion where they got it from?” I asked. “No,” explained Robina. “All Veronica can say is that he told her he knew where he could get some, and was gone about ten minutes. Of course they must have stolen it—even that did not seem to trouble her.” “It came to her as a gift from the gods, Robina,” I explained. “I remember how I myself used to feel about these things, at ten. To have enquired further would have seemed to her impious. How was it they were not both killed?”