"Mum?" he said in a low, heart-broken voice.
"Yes, my dear?"
"I want to tell you something."
"Yes, Timmy?"
"It's I who ought to be shot, not Josephine. It was all my fault. It had
nothing to do with her."
"I don't know what you mean, Timmy. You mustn't talk in that exaggerated
way. Of course it was foolish of you to bring the cat into the
drawing-room, but still, you couldn't possibly have known that she would
fly at Mrs. Crofton, or you wouldn't have done it."
"I _did_ think she'd fly at Mrs. Crofton," he whispered.
Janet felt disagreeably startled. "What d'you mean, Timmy? D'you mean
that you saw the cat fly at her before it happened?"
She had known the boy to have such strange, vivid premonitions of events
which had come to pass.
But Timmy answered slowly: "No, I don't mean that. I mean, Mum, that I
wanted to try an experiment. I wanted to see if Josephine would see what
Flick saw--I mean if she'd see the ghost of Colonel Crofton's dog. She
did, for the dog was close to Mrs. Crofton's arm--the arm hanging over
the side of the sofa, you know."
"Oh, Timmy! How very, very wrong of you to do such a thing!"
"I know it was wrong.
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