“Come, Ambrose,” said Mr Hawthorne encouragingly, “you must take courage. It is never easy to confess our faults, but there is nothing really to fear. It will soon be over.”
Ambrose pushed open the gate, and with the crock under his arm crept a few steps towards the cottage door. Then he turned, his face white with fear.
“You won’t go away till I come out,” he said. David had been standing by his father’s side, feeling very much relieved that he was not to go in and see Miss Barnicroft. He had still a lingering doubt in his mind that she might wish to send him and his brother to prison. But when Ambrose gave that frightened look back, something made him feel that he must go in too; he left his father without a word, went up to Ambrose, and took hold of his hand.
“I’ll go in with you,” he said.
How often they had longed to see the inside of this mysterious dwelling, and yet now that the moment had come, how gladly would they have found themselves safely at home in the Vicarage! Pennie and Ambrose had vied with each other in providing strange and weird articles of furniture and ornaments for it; but the reality was almost startlingly different. When, after several knocks, the boys were told to “come in,” they entered a room which was just like that in any other cottage, except that it was barer. There was, indeed, scarcely any furniture at all, no curtain to the window, no pictures on the blank whitewashed walls, and only a very tiny square of carpet on the floor. A common deal table stood in the middle of this, and two deal boxes or packing-cases seemed to serve for seats; on the wide hearth, a fire of sticks was crackling under a kettle which hung over it by a chain, and two dogs which had been asleep, got up and growled at the strangers. There was nothing the least strange in the room, unless it was Miss Barnicroft herself, who, with her head tied up in a white cotton handkerchief, sat on one of the boxes, writing busily in a book. She gazed at her two visitors without knowing them at first, but soon a light came into her eyes.
“Ah, the vicar’s little boys, I think?” she said graciously. “Pray sit down.”
She waved her hand with the majesty of a queen towards the other box, and the boys, not daring to dispute her least sign, bestowed themselves upon it, as close together as possible, with the fatal little crock squeezed between them. There they sat for a minute in silence staring at Miss Barnicroft, who, with her head bent gently forward and a look of polite inquiry, waited to hear their errand.
It was so dreadful to see her sitting there, and to know how her face would change presently, that Ambrose had a wild impulse to run out of the room and leave the crock to tell its own tale. He gave a glance at David, and saw by the way he had placed his hands on his knees, and fixed his eyes immovably on Miss Barnicroft, that he had no intention of either moving or speaking. Ambrose was the elder; it was for him to take the lead. There were times when Ambrose would cheerfully have given up all the rights and privileges belonging to that position, and this was one of them, but he knew that he must make an effort. Father was waiting outside. They could not sit there in silence any longer. He must speak.
Seizing the crock, he suddenly rushed up to Miss Barnicroft, held it out, and said huskily:
“We’ve come to bring back this!”