“How was that?” said George, half-amused, half-pained,—“stolen perhaps?”
“Not so,” answered Waife, somewhat gloomily, “but restored. A poor dear old man, who thought very ill of me, and I don’t wonder at it,—was reduced from great wealth to great poverty. While I was laid up, my landlady read a newspaper to me, and in that newspaper was an account of his reverse and destitution. But I was accountable to him for the balance of an old debt, and that, with the doctor’s bills, quite covered my L120. I hope he does not think quite so ill of me now. But the money brought good luck to him, rather than to me. Well, sir, if you were now to give me money, I should be on the look-out for some mournful calamity. Gold is not natural to me. Some day, however, by and by, when you are inducted into your living, and have become a renowned preacher, and have plenty to spare, with an idea that you will feel more comfortable in your mind if you had done something royal for the basketmaker, I will ask you to help me to make up a sum, which I am trying by degrees to save,—an enormous sum, almost as much as I paid away from my railway compensation: I owe it to the lady who lent it to release Sophy from an engagement which I—certainly without any remorse of conscience—made the child break.”
“Oh, yes! What is the amount? Let me at least repay that debt.”
“Not yet. The lady can wait; and she would be pleased to wait, because she deserves to wait: it would be unkind to her to pay it off at once. But in the meanwhile if you could send me a few good books for Sophy,—instructive, yet not very, very dry,-and a French dictionary, I can teach her French when the winter days close in. You see I am not above being paid, sir. But, Mr. Morley, there is a great favour you can do me.”
“What is it? Speak.”
“Cautiously refrain from doing me a great disservice! You are going back to your friends and relations. Never speak of me to them. Never describe me and my odd ways. Name not the lady, nor—nor—nor—the man who claimed Sophy.
“Your friends might not hurt me; others might. Talk travels. The hare is not long in its form when it has a friend in a hound that gives tongue. Promise what I ask. Promise it as ‘man and gentleman.’”
“Certainly. Yet I have one relation to whom I should like, with your permission, to speak of you, with whom I could wish you acquainted. He is so thorough a man of the world, that he might suggest some method to clear your good name, which you yourself would approve. My uncle, Colonel Morley—”
“On no account!” cried Waife, almost fiercely, and he evinced so much anger and uneasiness that it was long before George could pacify him by the most earnest assurances that his secret should be inviolably kept, and his injunctions faithfully obeyed. No men of the world consulted how to force him back to the world of men that he fled from! No colonels to scan him with martinet eyes, and hint how to pipeclay a tarnish! Waife’s apprehensions gradually allayed and his confidence restored, one fine morning George took leave of his eccentric benefactor.
Waife and Sophy stood gazing after him from their garden-gate, the cripple leaning lightly on the child’s arm. She looked with anxious fondness into the old man’s thoughtful face, and clung to him more closely as she looked.