This was a great deal for Mr. Harding to acknowledge; but the truth was, he missed his late assistant more than he cared to say; and when one morning he received a letter from him, enclosing a postal order for half a crown, "towards repaying you for the loss you made through me," as John Monday explained, he knew not what to think.
"I shall not keep the money," he declared, after he had told Mousey about it. "The idea of his sending it to me—the first money he has been able to save, he says, and he hopes to pay me the full amount if I will take it in instalments."
"I think it's very nice of him, don't you, Cousin Robert?" the little girl inquired. "It shows he wants to make up to you what you lost."
"But I don't want him to do that," the old man protested; "I never dreamt he would think of doing it. No, I can't take it. I shall send it back to him."
This he accordingly did, writing at the same time a stiff little note, which nevertheless breathed such evident goodwill that it touched the heart of John Monday when he received it.
That was the first money Mr. Harding had ever refused in his life; and it astonished Maria greatly that he should have done so now.
"I can't think what's come to master," she told Mousey in confidence; "he seems to me to have altered lately. I was amazed when he told me he meant to retire from business, and since then I've seen things that have set me thinking—little things, perhaps, but they show there's a change somewhere. I date it from the time you came here, my dear; since then master's been slowly but surely changing his ways. I'm sure he doesn't set such store by his money as he did; perhaps he's found out the folly of hoarding it."
"Perhaps he has," Mousey answered thoughtfully.
She was reminded of Maria's words when, on the next Sunday afternoon, her cousin asked her to read the Bible to him, and instead of letting her choose a portion where she pleased, requested her to read the chapter with the verse in it which commenced, "Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth." She complied, and when she had finished told him that it had been her mother's favourite chapter.
"She said it was so comforting, for it tells how God knows what things we have need of," she explained "and that He will give us all we want. Only we must seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness everything else comes after!"