CHAPTER XV
The next day the secret was out. The inquest had been adjourned because there was new evidence. During the absence of Mr. and Mrs. Barnard from the Home Farm, at Friars' Moat, a detective had interviewed their daughter Margaret (left in the care of a neighbour), and had picked up information of such importance that the child had to be summoned as witness. Mrs. Barnard was recalled, and her little girl was minutely questioned as to the conversation which had taken place in her presence between her mother and Kate Craigie, Lady Hereward's maid.
Who would have dreamed that a tiny being, scarcely more than a baby (in a mother's eyes, at least), would notice so much, and remember so many details of talk between grown-up people? Other mothers, on hearing the story of Poppet, took the affair as a warning not to talk before their children, and recalled the adage, "little pitchers have large ears." Some of Kate Craigie's friends said that Poppet was a sly young minx. But Poppet was not a minx, and so far from being sly, she was almost embarrassingly honest when she spoke out her childish thoughts. She was, however, a reserved, as well as a thoughtful, little
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