“Impossible!” cried Salis, giving the table a sounding thump with his closed fist, and bursting into a roar of laughter.
“Impossible, Mary. I haven’t any surplus for them to steal.”
“Ay, well,” grumbled the old sexton, looking wonderingly at the curate and then at Leo and Mary in turn; “you may say so, parson, but I know. It were a hanging up on peg alongside o’ the gownd, and they’d pulled ’em both down to take away, when they must have been skeered, and they chowked the gownd down in the corner by the oak chesty, and the surplus is gone.”
“Ah, well, it might have been worse,” said Salis, with a sigh. “It was my new one, though, and the old one is terribly darned. Leo, dear, you will have to get out the old one again. Mary has the keys.”
“It be a bad job, parson.”
“It is, Moredock, a very bad job; but I’m glad the wretches were scared. I won’t believe it was any one from Duke’s Hampton.”
“Nay, it were some of the King’s Hampton lot, safe, parson. Ugh! they’re a bad set out yunder. I thought it my dooty to come on and tell you, sir, and now I’m going away back.”
“Let me give you a cup of tea, Moredock,” said Mary; “you look tired.”
“Bless your sweet eyes and heart, miss, and thankye kindly,” said Moredock. “Cup o’ tea’s a great comfort to a lone old man. And thankye kindly for undertaking to take care o’ my Dally, as wants it, like most young gels. Why, Miss Mary, I’ve know’d you since you was quite a little thin slip.”
“You have, Moredock,” said Mary, smiling, as she handed the tea to her brother for the old man, who paid no farther heed to Leo. “I was only fifteen when I first saw you.”