Page:Fletcher - The Mortover Grange Affair.pdf/284

 "But she's the sort of woman who wouldn't tell you if she did take your advice about anything. Close! She may have taken it to get reset while she was in London, of course."

"Not many jewellers knocking around in the Mortover Grange neighbourhood, to be sure!" remarked Wedgwood. "Mrs. Clagne's been at the Grange a long time, hasn't she?"

"A great many years," assented Mrs. Patello. "You might say, indeed, that she's one of the family, she's been so bound up in it. There were reasons. You see, just about the time that Janet lost her husband, Stephen Mortover lost his wife; they died, Clagne and Mrs. Stephen, within a few weeks of each other. And both Stephen and Janet were left with small children to bring up—Stephen had a boy, this present young Philip, and Janet had a boy, Walter. They were both about the same age, those two children. Well, now, Stephen, he was a shiftless sort of man; no good at all, and certainly not fit to bring up a motherless infant. So Janet took Philip away with her to where she was then living so that she could bring him up with her own boy. So, of course, she's been his foster-mother all his life."

"Where is her own son, then?" asked Wedgwood. This family history, not at all pertinent