'You must have heard,' said the mother.
'I don't in the least know what you are talking about. I have heard nothing at all.'
In very truth he had heard nothing of his old friend,—not even that he had returned to England. Then by degrees the whole story was told to him. 'I know that he was putting a lot of money together,' said Dick enviously. 'Married Hester Bolton? I thought he would! Bigamy! Euphemia Smith! Married before! Certainly not at the diggings.'
'He wasn't married up at Ahalala?' asked the doctor.
'To Euphemia Smith? I was there when they quarrelled, and when she went into partnership with Crinkett. I am sure there was no such marriage. John Caldigate in prison for bigamy? And he paid them twenty thousand pounds? The more fool he!'
'They all say that.'
'But it's an infernal plant. As sure as my name is Richard Shand, John Caldigate never married that woman.'
Chapter L.
Again at Sir John's Chambers
And this was the man as to whom it had been acknowledged that his evidence, if it could be obtained, would be final. The return of Dick himself was to the Shands an affair so much more momentous than the release of John Caldigate from prison, that for some hours or so the latter subject was allowed to pass out of sight. The mother got him up-stairs and asked after his linen,—vain inquiry,—and arranged for his bed, turning all the little Rewbles into one small room. In the long run, grandmothers are more tender to their grand-children than their own offspring. But at this moment Dick was predominant. How grand a thing to have her son returned to her, and such a son,—a teetotaller of two years' growth, who had seen all the world of the Pacific Ocean! As he could not take whisky-and-water, would he like ginger-beer before he went to bed,—or arrowroot? Dick decided in favour of ginger-beer, and consented to be embraced again.