Mrs. Baker was a big broad weather-beaten woman with a rapid flow of speech. I was relieved to notice no signs of anger or accusation.

“I hope, sir,” she said, beginning at once when the door had closed behind Partridge, “that you’ll excuse the liberty I’ve taken in coming to see you. But I thought, sir, as you was the proper person to come to, and I should be thankful if you could see your way to telling me what I ought to do in the circumstances, because in my opinion, sir, something ought to be done, and I’ve never been one to let the grass grow under my feet, and what I say is, no use moaning and groaning, but ‘Up and doing’ as vicar said in his sermon only the week before last.”

I felt slightly bewildered and as though I had missed something essential in the conversation.

“Certainly,” I said. “Won’t you—er—sit down, Mrs. Baker? I’m sure I shall be glad to—er help you in anyway I can—”

I paused expectantly.

“Thank you, sir.” Mrs. Baker sat down on the edge of a chair. “It’s very good of you, I’m sure. And glad I am that I came to you, I said to Beatrice, I said, and her howling and crying on her bed, Mr. Burton will know what to do, I said, being a London gentleman. And something must be done, what with young men being so hotheaded and not listening to reason the way they are, and not listening to a word a girl says, and anyway, if it was me, I says to Beatrice I’d give him as good as I got, and what about that girl down at the mill?”

I felt more than ever bewildered.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “But I don’t quite understand. What has happened?”

“It’s the letters, sir. Wicked letters—indecent, too, using such words and all. Worse than I’ve ever seen in the Bible, even.”

Passing over an interesting sideline here, I said desperately:

“Has your daughter been having more letters?”

“Not her, sir. She had just the one. That one as was the occasion of her leaving here.”

“There was absolutely no reason—” I began, but Mrs. Baker firmly and respectfully interrupted me:

“There is no need to tell me, sir, that what was wrote was all wicked lies. I had Miss Partridge’s word for that—and indeed I would have known it for myself. You aren’t that type of gentleman, sir, that I well know, and you an invalid and all. Wicked untruthful lies it was, but all the same I says to Beatrice as she’d better leave because you know what talk is, sir. No smoke without fire, that’s what people say. And a girl can’t be too careful. And besides the girl herself felt bashful like after what had been written, so I says, ‘Quite right,’ to Beatrice when she said she wasn’t coming up here again, though I’m sure we both regretted the inconvenience being such—”