“The one I picked up by our slip-rails the night I took Missy back to Melbourne. It belonged to yon man I told you I met on the road. I was saving it in case I ever set eyes on him again.”
“Oh, that one!” cried Arabella; then, after a pause, she added, with a nonchalance which Missy for one admired: “I gave it back to him the other day.”
“To whom?”
“Why, the man that lost it!”
“You gave it back—to the man that lost it?” cried David, in the greatest surprise, while Missy became buried in the Argus of that morning. “Dear me, where have you seen him, honey?”
“In the township.”
“In the township, eh? Now what sort of a man was it that you saw in the township? Tell me what he was like.”
“Like? Oh, he had—let's see—he had very dark eyes; oh, yes, and a dark moustache and all; and he was very—well, rather handsome, I thought him.”
“Ay, that's near enough,” said Mr. Teesdale, greatly puzzled; “quite near enough to satisfy me that he's the same man; but how in the world did you know that he was? That's what I can't make out!”
“Why, he told me himself, to be sure!”