"Well," he said, "this wrangling here was bad for all parties. The boy was always in hot water."
"Because she was so cross-grained—because she hated him. Oh, I cannot, cannot bear to think of it!"
"Pray," said a sharp, shrill voice from the bottom step of the very narrow staircase which led into the still narrower passage, "pray, what is all this about?"
"Jack never came home last night," Patience said in a voice of repressed emotion. "He never came home. He is gone, and I shall never see him again."
"Oh, fiddlesticks!" was the reply. "Bad pennies always turn up. I never knew one in my life that was lost. Mark my words, you have not seen the last of him—worse luck."
"That's not a very pleasant way to talk, Miss Pinckney: you'll excuse me for saying so," said Mr. Paterson. "The boy was a good boy on the whole."
"A good boy!" Miss Pinckney was screaming now. "Well, George Paterson, your ideas of goodness and mine differ. You may please to take yourself off now, for I've no time to spend in gossip;" and Miss Pinckney began her operations by flapping with a duster the counter of the shop, and taking from the drawers certain boxes of small articles in which she dealt.
While she was thus engaged, she suddenly stopped short, and uttered an exclamation of horror, turning a white face to her sister, who was listening to the few words of comfort George had to bestow. "Look here!" she exclaimed; "look here! The secret's out. The little tin cash-box is gone, and the thief is out of reach. What do you say to your good boy now, eh, George Paterson?"
George Paterson took one step into the shop, and said—
"How do you know he took it? He is the last boy I could think of as a thief."