"'Tisn't nonsense--at least I don't think so," said Cherry, rather dubiously. "Of course Nurse Marg'ret didn't die.... I don't think she even got ill--but p'raps Tochatti didn't stick the pins in far 'nuff."
"Well, I'm quite sure if she stuck in all the pins out of your cherry-tree pincushion it wouldn't affect Nurse Margaret or anybody else," said Anstice, putting his arm round her shoulders as he spoke. "And you really mustn't get such silly notions into your head, Cherry Ripe!"
"That's what Iris used to call me," said Cherry, burrowing her head contentedly into his neck. "I wish she was back, don't you, my dear? Somehow things don't seem half such fun without Iris--I can't think what she wanted to go and marry Uncle Bruce for, can you?"
"There are many things I can't understand, little Cherry," said Anstice with a smile whose sadness was hidden from the child. "But I agree with you that it was much nicer when Iris"--he might venture here to use the beloved little name--"was at home. But we can't always have the people we like with us, can we?"
"No--or I'd always have you, my dear," said Cherry with unexpected though rather sleepy affection; and as Anstice, touched by the words, kissed her upturned little face, her pretty brown eyes closed irresistibly.
"Good-night, Cherry! Pleasant dreams!" He laid her back deftly on her pillows and the child was asleep almost before he had time to reach the door.
But as he went back to the drawing-room, eager to tell Mrs. Carstairs and Sir Richard of the revelations so innocently made by Cherry, he wondered whether at last the mystery were really within reach of a solution.
Cherry's story, although fragmentary and confused, was sufficiently coherent to rank as evidence; and although he could hardly credit Tochatti with a genuine belief in the old superstition of the wax image he reminded himself she was half a Southerner; and that in some of the mediæval Italian towns and cities superstitions still thrive, in spite of the teaching of the modern world.
And if Cherry's story were true---"Out of the mouths of babes"--he murmured to himself as he went down the shallow oak stairs--"strange if, after all, the child should be the one to clear up the whole mysterious affair! At any rate, we are a step further on the way to elucidation; and from the bottom of my heart I hope Mrs. Carstairs may be righted at last!"