"Mayhap she didn't know it when she gave the address. But," persisted
Mr. Hucks doggedly, "she's there if she's alive. You go back and try."
[He gave Tilda, as the reader knows, more credit than she deserved; but from this may be deduced a sound moral—that the value of probity, as an asset in dealing, is quite incalculable.]
Miss Sally considered for a full minute—for two minutes, Mr. Hucks watching her face from under his shaggy eyebrows.
"It is barely possible," she owned at length. "But supposing they have reached Holmness, it can only be to starve. Good Lord! they may be starving to death there at this moment!"
Mr. Hucks kept his composure.
"It's plain to me you haven't measured that gal," he said slowly. "Is this Holmness in sight from the farm—whatever you call it—where they were missed?"
"Right opposite the coast there."
"And not more than three miles away? Then you may take it she won't have started without provisions. It wouldn't be her way."
[Again, the reader perceives, he gave Tilda undeserved credit; but always in this world the Arthur Miles's will be left out of account by men of business, to upset again and again their calculations.]
"So," he continued, "there's no need for you to be running and sending telegrams to folks there to chivvy 'em. Take the next train home and pick up the credit yourself."