But first he must make sure.
"Tell me, Cherry"--he spoke lightly--"how did you see all this? Surely Tochatti didn't show you what she was doing?"
"No." For a second Cherry looked abashed; then her spirit returned to her and she spoke boldly. "It was one night when Nurse Marg'ret had gone to bed--she was awful tired, and Tochatti said she'd sit up with me ... and I was cross, 'cos I didn't want her, I wanted Nurse Marg'ret," said Cherry honestly, "so I wouldn't speak to her, though she tried ever so hard to make me, and she thought I'd gone to sleep, and I heard her say something in 'talian.... I 'spect it was something naughty, 'cos she sort of hissed it, like a nasty snake once did at me when I was a teeny baby in Injia," said Cherry lucidly, "and then she looked up to be sure I was asleep, so I shutted my eyes ever so tight, and then she made the wax dollie and I watched her do it." Wicked Cherry chuckled gleefully at the remembrance.
"But the letter 'M'--how do you know she wrote that?" Anstice put the question very quietly.
"'Cos she couldn't find nothin' to write with, so she crept into Nurse Marg'ret's room next through mine and came back with her pen--one of those things what has little ink-bottles inside them," said Cherry, referring, probably, to the nurse's beloved "Swan." "And I watched her ever so close, 'cos I wanted to see what she was going to do, and she wrote a big 'M' on a bit of paper and pinned it into the dollie----"
"Into?" For a moment Anstice was puzzled.
"Yes, 'cos you see the dollie was all soft and squeezy," explained Cherry obligingly, "and it hadn't got no clothes on to pin it to, so it had to go into the soft part of the dollie."
"I see. But"--Anstice was still puzzled--"why do you say the dollie was meant for Nurse Margaret? Mightn't it have been somebody else?"
"No--'cos when Tochatti hates anyone she makes wax dollies end sticks pins into them," returned Cherry calmly. "I know, 'cos she once told me about a girl she knew what wanted somebody to die, and she did that and the person died."
"Oh, my dear little Cherry, what nonsense!" Anstice, whose mother had been an Irishwoman, had heard of the superstition before, had even known an old crone in a little Irish cabin high up in the mountains who had, so it was said, practised the rite with success; but to hear the unholy gospel from Cherry's innocent lips was distinctly distasteful; and instinctively he tried to shake her faith in Tochatti's teaching.