“But do you never hear from your sons?” asked Mr. Craig. “Does your daughter write her husband’s and brother’s news as well as her own?”
“They write, I dare say,” said Mr. Pye, “when times of business come round. On quarter-days, or once in the half-year, perhaps, when remittances have to be sent, Hester gives up the pen to one or other of your sons.”
“Not exactly so,” replied the widow; “for they have nothing to do with the sending of my pension. That comes from quite another quarter; but on birth-days and Christmas-days——Bless me, Mr. Pye, what can I have said that delights you so? You look as if you were going to dance for joy.”
“So neither Edgar nor Philip sends you money! You have taken a load off my mind, I can tell you. But I was not going to deceive you, I assure you; I was going to tell you what we came for, as soon as I could get courage. But it is all right if you get your remittances from quite another quarter, as you say. Now you have only to tell us what that quarter is, and you are quite safe; for nobody suspected you. Of course, nobody could suspect you.”
Mrs. Parndon looked from one face to the other, as she sat opposite to them, unable to make out anything from this explanation of Enoch’s rapture. Mr. Craig said, cheerfully,
“So far from wishing to do you any hurt, we come to put you on your guard, and help you to justify yourself in a matter in which you have evidently been imposed upon.”
And he proceeded to inform her of several bad notes having been traced back to her, expressing his conviction that nothing more would be necessary to clear herself than to give the date of the arrival of her quarter’s money. It was hoped too that she had some left, in order that the remaining notes might be compared with those already issued.
The widow said there must be some great mistake somewhere. Her quarter’s money never came in bank-notes; and all that she had lately used came from the hands of her daughter; so that those who suspected anything wrong were completely out in their reckoning. If the notes were bad, they came, like other bad things, from London; and she supposed no one would take the trouble of tracing them there.
Mr. Craig said he believed it would be necessary for Mrs. Morrison to say where she got them.
“I can tell you that,” replied the widow. “She got them from one who takes more bank-notes in a month than I spend in a year. She got them from her brother Philip, I know, on account of a little business she did for me with him. But I shall be very sorry if Philip has to bear the loss, just when his business is falling off, as he says. It would be a great loss, and I should be sorry it should fall upon him now.”