“You ought not to abuse the money; it was not wicked. You ought to wish that you had returned it. But that is no use; the thing is to return it now. Has your husband got a sovereign?”
“No. He may ha’ got one since I be laid up. But I never can tell him about it; and I should be main sorry to spend one of his hard earning in that way, poor man.”
“Well, I’ll tell him, and we’ll manage it somehow.”
I thought for a few moments she would break out in opposition; but she hid her face with the sheet instead, and burst into a great weeping.
I took this as a permission to do as I had said, and went to the room-door and called her husband. He came, looking scared. His wife did not look up, but lay weeping. I hoped much for her and him too from this humiliation before him, for I had little doubt she needed it.
“Your wife, poor woman,” I said, “is in great distress because—I do not know when or how—she picked up a sovereign that did not belong to her, and, instead of returning, put it away somewhere and lost it. This is what is making her so miserable.”
“Deary me!” said Stokes, in the tone with which he would have spoken to a sick child; and going up to his wife, he sought to draw down the sheet from her face, apparently that he might kiss her; but she kept tight hold of it, and he could not. “Deary me!” he went on; “we’ll soon put that all to rights. When was it, Jane, that you found it?”
“When we wanted so to have a pig of our own; and I thought I could soon return it,” she sobbed from under the sheet.
“Deary me! Ten years ago! Where did you find it, old woman?”
“I saw Squire Tresham drop it, as he paid me for some ginger-beer he got for some ladies that was with him. I do believe I should ha’ given it back at the time; but he made faces at the ginger-beer, and said it was very nasty; and I thought, well, I would punish him for it.”