“Never mind, dear Mrs. Buckle,” she said. “Jack and I will see you through. We don’t know much, it is true; but we are strong and can work, and we will take your land on as well as our own, so you will not be left in the lurch.”
“Yes, we will see you through, never you fear!” put in Jack. Then he burst out in a stormy fashion: “You are not going to believe that Grandfather is a thief, Mrs. Buckle, or that I knew I had no right to the watch?”
“Of course not. What a silly boy it is!” Mrs. Buckle looked up at the sky, as if she were talking to someone above her head, and she took no notice at all of Mose Paget, who hovered still in the background, as if to see if there was any chance that she would pay up. “It is not at Ripple that I shall look when I want to find the thief. Don’t you think that I have sense enough to know an honest man when I see one?”
“Is it me you are wanting to call a thief?” burst out Mose, looking as if he would do her an injury there and then, while his face was fairly convulsed with anger.
Mrs. Buckle looked him over with a calm scorn that made him wince.
“I have always found you honest,” she said; then added, with a suspicion of malice in her tone, “but then I have always believed that it was opportunity that made the thief, and it is precious little opportunity you have had in my house to be anything but an honest man.”
“You are right enough there!” retorted Mose with hearty spite. “Yours is reckoned the meanest house in the township, and the stuff that is thrown away would not keep a sparrow. The mice die from want of nourishment, and the one or two rats that I have seen were just walking skeletons. Talk about the tender mercies of a woman! Why, you are the meanest creature alive!”
“Well, Amanda is fat enough even if the vermin are thin,” replied Mrs. Buckle with a jolly laugh at being able to get the last word. Then she said sternly: “Now, Mose Paget, if you are not going to keep your side of the bargain, out you get, and that sharp, for I don’t allow no lazy, idle vagabonds to sauce me twice. Now, then, get!”
For a moment Mrs. Buckle stared into the face of the furious man, while he glared back at her; then, without another word, he swung round on his heel and took the trail which led east to the river, although his home was in the opposite direction.
“It looks funny, that it does!” Mrs. Buckle remarked as if talking to herself, and seeming for the moment quite unaware of the others standing near her. “Something has scared him pretty badly, or my name is not Martha Buckle. I don’t believe he has seen anyone this morning. If any stranger had been about the place surely I should have known about it.”