"The poor little horse toiled dismally up the long slippery hill."
The poor little horse toiled dismally up the long slippery hill, while the two from whose hands John had first rescued Lily walked together at his head and talked over their recovered prize. At last the reward that had long ago been offered for the lost child seemed to be really within their grasp. They could claim it now with an open face, for this time it could not be said that they had stolen the child.
"'Twas a lucky thought of yours, going down to that fair," said the woman to her husband. "As to me, I never expected to see her again. I couldn't believe my eyes when she came dancing round the tree with that very same locket round her neck, and looking just the same, only a bit bigger. They're good people as has taken care of her all this time. They might as likely as not have sent her to the Union. I wonder what their name is. There's a John as she talks about like as if he was a big boy."
"We won't make inquiries about John," said the man. "He'd maybe put in a claim for half the reward. Well, that's a queer part of the country, where they never hears nothing. But don't you go boasting too much. We should have been rich folks three years ago, if you hadn't made a fool of yourself. Just because I sent you and her down to lie quiet in one o' them lonely villages for a bit, till I could find out how the land lay, you must needs be so careful as to leave her under a hedge while you went drinking. I ain't going to trust you again in a hurry. My word, I wonder I didn't murder you!"
"Well, there, Dick, let bygones be bygones. What'll you do next?"
"Next? Why, lie safe at Moreton till first train to-morrow morning, and then get up to London and back to the old shop. Then let the police know as we can give information of the whereabouts of Miss—— there, no names."
"Wouldn't it be safer to go all the way with the cart?"
"No, stupid. It's likely enough they may follow us from Carsham—depends what sort of people they be, this here John and his lot. We must get out of this country as quick as ever we can."
That night John's Lily sobbed herself to sleep in a little black hole of a room, at the back of a low public-house in Moreton. The man and woman had changed their tone again, now that she seemed to be safely in their hands; perhaps it struck them that unkindness might not pay in the end. They did their best, though without success, to make her eat some supper. Finally the woman carried her upstairs, so weary with grief and the day's excitement that the fair little head could not hold itself up, but drooped and lay on its jailor's shoulder. Not unkindly the woman unwrapped the child and laid her down on a grimy little bed.
"Now you are a silly," she said. "Me and Dick's the kindest friends you've got, my dear. We're going to take you to a beautiful house where there's lots of servants and all kinds of pretty things, and sweets and toys as you never saw the like—leastways not since you was lost—and gentlemen and ladies to make ever such a fuss with you, and beautiful children to play with, and sweet new frocks so as you'll never be poor and shabby again. Oh, and such a lot of rooms—" she went on, seeing that the tired blue eyes had opened wide, and that in the dim flicker of the candle Lily was gazing with awakened interest—"and pictures on the walls and lots of lovely flowers——"