"He'd caught up with some chatter about your bein' a spy. Oh, bless your soul, everybody's talkin' about it!" she assured Nicky-Nan cheerfully. "But little pitchers have the longest ears; an' mother an' me bein' so busy with the packin', he got ahead of us. He's a clivver child, too, but"—'Beida shook her head—"I'm harried in mind about 'en. Quite in a tricksy way he wormed it out o' mother what a spy was, an' how the way to go to work was to s'arch his cupboards; an' then quick as snuff he started 'pon yours, not sayin' a word to anybody. Pretty clivver for four years' old—an' what's clivverer, he found the money too!"
"Damn the young viper! . . . No, I asks your pardon. Bless his tender heart, I s'pose I ought to say, seein' as how providential—"
"You can put it which way you like. I dessay God A'mighty has the right an' wrong of it clear; an' 'Bert an' I allowed we'd leave 'Biades to a Higher Power after we'd made him sensible, on the seat of his breeches, of the way his conduc' appealed to us. For I take shame to own it, Mr Nanjivell, but at sight o' that boundless gold Satan whispered in the poor mite's ear, an' he started priggin'. . . . The way we found it out was, he came home from Mrs Pengelly's stinkin' o' peppermints: an' when we nosed him an' asked how he came to be favoured so, all he could say on the ground hop was that he'd met a shinin' Angel unexpected in Cobb's Ally: an' the Angel had stopped him and pulled out a purse an' said, 'Alcibiades Penhaligon, the Lord has been much interested of late in your goin's-out an' your comin's-in, an' what a good boy you've a-been. Here is 2d. for you in gold o' the purest water. Go thou an' carry it to Our good friend Missis Pengelly, who will doubtless reckernise and exchange it in peppermint cushions.' Which was too thin. So we were forced to beat him till the truth came out. An' then he brought us here, an' showed what he'd a-found: an' with the furnitcher movin' an' mother so busy, 'Bert and I managed the rest. We weren't goin' to let that Pamphlett snatch it. If you'll come around by Aun' Bunney's back-garden into Mother's kitchen you shall count it out, every penny."
"'Bert," said Nicky-Nan after a pause, "you've done a Kind Action this day, if you never do another."
"But the clivverness started with 'Biades," insisted 'Beida. "I hope you'll bear that in mind, though I say nothing against the child's sinfulness."
"You're the best friends, all three, I ever met in this world," said
Nicky-Nan gratefully.
On his homeward road, and half-way up the hill, Mr Pamphlett at the same moment turned, looked aloft, and accused Providence.
"What blisters me," said Mr Pamphlett to the welkin, "is the thought that I subscribed no less than two guineas to the Boy Scouts Movement!"