Page:The Strange Case of Miss Annie Spragg (1928).djvu/50

 would gather it up and enclose it within her over-plump arms. It was her city, Brinoë—Winnery suddenly had the feeling that she would make her own anything which she thought might be of use to her. She spoke as if her grandfather, instead of being a Congregationalist, had been at least a Gonzaga or a Sforza.

"But the worst trouble," she said, "came about when a man called Hasselman, who delivered milk in Winnebago Falls, told the story that he saw her coming home one morning just after daylight across the fields from a place called Meeker's Gulch." She paused for a moment and then added, "And the goat was with her."

The last sentence she uttered slowly and with a great ponderousness and then waited a moment. The Princess, whose thoughts had clearly been wandering, was sitting upright now. She had stopped glancing at her watch and was listening, and into the eyes of Father d'Astier there had come a queer look of pain.

"Nobody ever proved the story," said Mrs. Weatherby, "and Hasselman was known to drink, so a great many people thought he had been seeing things. But the people in the town began to get uneasy about Miss Annie Spragg and say that she ought to be shut up. A committee from the church was going to see her brother about having her sent away the very day he was murdered."

Somewhere in one of the other rooms the parrot began again to screech and Mrs. Weatherby, annoyed, suddenly rose and, floating across the room, called out, "Gertrude, Gertrude, what are you do-