Page:Gissing - The Nether World, vol. III, 1889.djvu/281

Rh brotherly talk. Whilst she was getting ready he took John aside into the parlour, to impart a strange piece of news he bad brought from Clerkenwell.

“Mrs. Peckover has had a narrow escape of being poisoned. She was found by one of her lodgers all but dead, and last night the police arrested her daughter on the charge.”

“Mrs. Snowdon?”

“Yes. The mother has accused her. There’s a man concerned in the affair. One of the men showed me a report in to-day’s paper; I didn’t buy one, because we shall have it in the Sunday paper to-morrow. Nice business, eh?”

“That’s for the old woman’s money, I’ll wager!” exclaimed Hewett, in an awed voice. “I can believe it of Clem; if ever there was a downright bad ’un! Was she living in the Close?”

“Mrs. Snowdon wasn’t. Somewhere in Hoxton. No doubt it was for the money—if the charge is true. We won’t speak of it before the children.”

“Think of that, now! Many’s the time I’ve looked at Clem Peckover and said to myself,