"Nor your mother?"
"Oh yes, sir. She has read the letter, and thinks I had better come to you to ask what we should do."
"Have you got the money, Fanny?"
Fanny Brattle explained that she had in her pocket something over the sum named, but that money was so scarce with them now at the mill, that she could hardly send it without her father's knowledge. She would not, she said, be afraid to send it and then to tell her father afterwards. The Vicar considered the matter for some time, standing with the open letter in his hand, and then he gave his advice.
"Come into the house, Fanny," he said, "and write a line to your brother, and then get a money order at the post-office for four pounds, and send it to your brother; and tell him that I lend it to him till times shall be better with him. Do not give him your father's money without your father's leave. Sam will pay me some day, unless I be mistaken in him."
Then Fanny Brattle with many grateful thanks did as the Vicar bade her.
CHAPTER XXXIX.
THE THREE HONEST MEN.
The Vicar of Bullhampton was—a "good sort of fellow." In praise of him to this extent it is hoped that the reader will cordially agree. But it cannot be denied that he was the most imprudent of men. He had done very much that was imprudent in respect to the Marquis of Trowbridge; and since he had been at Bullhampton had been imprudent in nearly everything that he had done regarding the Brattles. He was well aware that the bold words which he had spoken to the Marquis had been dragon's teeth sown by himself, and that they had sprung up from the ground in the shape of the odious brick building which now stood immediately in face of his own Vicarage gate. Though he would smile and be droll, and talk to the workmen, he hated that building quite as bitterly as did his wife. And now, in regard to the Brattles, there came upon him a great trouble. About a week after he had lent the four pounds to Fanny on Sam's behalf, there came to him a dirty note from Salisbury, written by Sam himself, in which he was told that Carry Brattle was now at the Three Honest Men, a public-house in one of the suburbs of the city, waiting there till Mr. Fenwick should find a home for her,—in accordance with his promise given to her brother. Sam, in his letter, had gone on to explain that it would be well that Mr. Fenwick should visit the Three Honest Men speedily, as otherwise there would be a bill there which neither Carry nor Sam would be able to defray. Poor Sam's letter was bald, and they who did not understand his position might have called it bold. He wrote to the Vicar as though the Vicar's coming to Salisbury for the required purpose was a matter of course; and demanded a home for his sister without any reference to her future mode of life, or power of earning her bread, as though it was the Vicar's manifest duty to provide such home. And then that caution in regard to the bill was rather a threat than anything else. If you don't take her quickly from the Three Honest Men there'll be the very mischief of a bill for you to pay. That was the meaning of the caution, and so the Vicar understood it.