So saying, and shaking his head in a very sorrowful and disconsolate manner, he turned back, and soon re-entered his own house, where Mrs Varden and the faithful Miggs had been anxiously expecting his return.
Now Mrs Varden (and by consequence Miss Miggs likewise) was impressed with a secret misgiving that she had done wrong; that she had, to the utmost of her small means, aided and abetted the growth of disturbances, the end of which it was impossible to foresee; that she had led remotely to the scene which had just passed; and that the locksmith’s time for triumph and reproach had now arrived indeed. And so strongly did Mrs Varden feel this, and so crestfallen was she in consequence, that while her husband was pursuing their lost journeyman, she secreted under her chair the little red-brick dwelling-house with the yellow roof, lest it should furnish new occasion for reference to the painful theme; and now hid the same still more, with the skirts of her dress.
But it happened that the locksmith had been thinking of this very article on his way home, and that, coming into the room and not seeing it, he at once demanded where it was.
Mrs Varden had no resource but to produce it, which she did with many tears, and broken protestations that if she could have known—
‘Yes, yes,’ said Varden, ‘of course—I know that. I don’t mean to reproach you, my dear. But recollect from this time that all good things perverted to evil purposes, are worse than those which are naturally bad. A thoroughly wicked woman, is wicked indeed. When religion goes wrong, she is very wrong, for the same reason. Let us say no more about it, my dear.’
So he dropped the red-brick dwelling-house on the floor, and setting his heel upon it, crushed it into pieces. The halfpence, and sixpences, and other voluntary contributions, rolled about in all directions, but nobody offered to touch them, or to take them up.
‘That,’ said the locksmith, ‘is easily disposed of, and I would to Heaven that everything growing out of the same society could be settled as easily.’
‘It happens very fortunately, Varden,’ said his wife, with her handkerchief to her eyes, ‘that in case any more disturbances should happen—which I hope not; I sincerely hope not—’
‘I hope so too, my dear.’
‘—That in case any should occur, we have the piece of paper which that poor misguided young man brought.’