Miss Silver smiled warmly.
“I am sure you will find that he is in agreement with me as to the necessity of your remaining quite detached from this business. I think it would be very dangerous for Jimmy Mottingley if you were to involve yourself in this case in any way.”
Chapter XXXI
Jenny was out in the village. She had undertaken to do the shopping, and she was very anxious to show that she could do it without making any mistakes. There were not a great many shops to go to. There was Mrs. Dean who kept a general shop, and Mrs. Maples who had bread and cakes, biscuits, and groceries. In the general shop you could buy vegetables in season, and boots and shoes of the stoutly wearing kind, together with an assortment of tins ranging from peaches to boot-polish.
“No-no apricots today, miss,” said Mrs. Dean. “Mrs. Pratt had the last, and what she wants with it dear knows, but I’ll lay she don’t! I’ve knowed her since she was a girl, and she was always the same-no head for anything. But there, it don’t do to talk about people, does it? It gets round to them something shocking in a village. Funny, isn’t it-I can remember ten or twelve years ago she was the prettiest girl in the village and all the men after her, and she married Albert Pratt, and he got killed a year later. Funny sort of affair it was. There was she laid up with her baby, and there was Albert coming home along the road to her when a car come by and run over him, and he never moved nor spoke after. Well, Mrs. Pratt, pore thing, she was neither to hold nor to bind-carried on dreadful she did, and everyone thought as how she’d marry again, but she didn’t, more’s the pity. Her Dicky, he’s a bright boy but heedless. Wants a man’s hand over him, that’s what I say. Now if you’d like a nice tin of peaches instead of the apricots-”
“Yes, the peaches will do very well,” said Jenny.
She had been wondering when she would be able to get a word in, but it was a fine morning and she wasn’t in a hurry. It was quite nice to saunter down the village street and feel that everyone was friendly and would talk to her, and Caroline was making a cake. She was just going to leave the shop, when a boy with a happy-go-lucky grin on his face looked round the door. Mrs. Dean said severely,
“Now, what are you not in school for, Dicky?”
Dicky smiled still more broadly. Jenny had the feeling that really it wasn’t possible for any boy to be as innocent as he looked.
“I had a headache and a stomach ache when I woke up this mornin’, and my mum said I needn’t go.”
“You mind what you’re up to,” said Mrs. Dean, “or you’ll be getting into trouble you will.”
“I was mortal sick when I woke up, Mrs. Dean. ’Orrible sick I was.”
“Too sick to eat a peppermint drop now, I’ll lay.”
“Oh, no. It’s quite gone off, Mrs. Dean-it has reelly.”
“You’re a bad boy, Dicky, and that’s the truth of it, and you won’t get no peppermint drops from me.”
“No, Mrs. Dean, I won’t-I know that. I’ve just come in to see if I could carry the young lady’s stuff.”
Jenny was waiting to get out of the shop. She gathered that she was the young lady concerned, and she smiled and shook her head.
“No, thank you,” she said. “I can manage what I’ve got quite nicely.”
But when she got out of the shop, there was Dicky beside her.
“You staying with Miss Danesworth?” he said brightly.
“Yes, I am.”
Jenny couldn’t help smiling. He was the untidiest boy she had ever seen. His bright yellow curls were a welter. They did not look as if they had been brushed for months. His clothes were a disgrace. The pockets of his trousers were stuffed full, his shirt was torn. All his clothes were stained and dishevelled. But those very blue eyes of his twinkled, and she wanted to laugh when she looked at him. Dicky had that kind of effect on a good many people. If he had not had the mistaken idea of producing stomach ache as one of his indispositions, she felt tolerably certain that Mrs. Dean would have had a peppermint for him. She thought he was a boy who would get what he wanted.
He walked along beside her scuffing up the dust with his toes. He hadn’t made up his mind yet. It didn’t do to be in a hurry, and he would want to make out what he was going to say very carefully. It wouldn’t do to make a mistake. As he went, he thought and kept on smiling. That was a very good dodge with the soap. His mother hadn’t noticed anything at all, and she hadn’t missed the tiddy little bits. He smiled benignly as he thought of how he had got up and chewed on those little bits. They had a funny kind of taste. He wouldn’t like to take too much of them, but they made a rare old fuzzygug in your mouth. It had frightened Mum all right-frightened her almost too much, for she wanted to send for the doctor, and he wasn’t having any of that. Well, here they were now. The trick with the soap had come off all right, and here was Miss Jenny.
What he hadn’t been able to make out at the time was the address on the note he had been given-“Miss Jenny Hill.” Well, this wasn’t any Miss Jenny Hill. This was Miss Jenny Forbes. Then why did the gentleman in the car tell him to give the note to Miss Jenny Hill? There wasn’t any Miss Jenny Hill that he could see-not in Hazeldon.
That’s what he had thought at the time, but then afterwards-after that chatterin’ old body that worked for Mrs. Merridew had had her say -he did see different about it. Only he didn’t quite know what he’d got to think. Least said soonest mended. Jenny Hill-he said the name out loud, “Miss Hill-Miss Jenny Hill.”
Jenny looked up startled.
“What did you say?”
He looked at her with that carefree innocent smile of his.
“Ow, nothin’-nothin’. It was just a name as took my fancy. Did you ever hear it afore?”
Jenny said, “Yes, I did. It was my name.”
“Ow? Why did you change it?”
Jenny bit her lip. Was that smiling look of his really innocent? She wasn’t sure. She laughed and said,
“You want to know too much.”
“It’s interestin’-that’s why I want to know.” The blue eyes gazed limpidly into hers. She found herself explaining, which she hadn’t meant to do.
“Well, sometimes you grow up with a name and you think it’s really yours, and then you find out that it isn’t.”
“It isn’t what?” said Dicky, deeply interested.
“It isn’t yours at all,” said Jenny. “You’ve got another name, and everyone doesn’t know it-not at first.”
When she came to think about it afterwards, she simply couldn’t imagine what had made her say it. She didn’t know that she was not the only one to say things which she regretted afterwards under Dicky’s innocent gaze. Nor would she be the last.
“That’s very interestin’,” said Dicky. He removed the gaze and fell to thinking about the note. After a moment he said, “Then if there was a note with Miss Jenny Hill on it, would that be for you, or wouldn’t it be?”
Jenny was startled. She said quickly,
“It would be for me. Why do you want to know?”
The blue gaze turned interestedly in her direction again.
“Ow, I was just wonderin’.”
Jenny stood still. She couldn’t think who in the world would be sending her a note addressed Miss Jenny Hill. She wasn’t Jenny Hill here.
She never had been Jenny Hill. How on earth had this boy got hold of the name, and who could possibly have written her a note addressed to Jenny Hill? The thought of Mac passed through her mind with a shudder. She had never been afraid of him whilst she had lived next door or when she had moved into Alington House. She had never been afraid then, but she was afraid now. It was nonsense. She was making a fool of herself. She said,
“Why were you wondering?”
The blue eyes never moved from her face. He scuffed with his feet in the dust.
“Ow, I just was.”
She said, “Dicky, I want an answer, and a true one. How did you know that I had been called Jenny Hill?”