“Don’t be afraid, dear,” he said. “If Roger chooses to do a dishonest thing, it is his own affair. We have warned him; and that is all we have to do with it. We must be honest ourselves,—that is all.”
“Then I think we had better not look any further into the chest,” said Mildred; “only just to find something warm to wrap Geordie in. The clothes look so nice—we might fancy we wanted things that we can very well do without.”
“I am not much afraid of that,” replied her brother: “and it would be a pity the things should spoil with the damp. They would be dry in an hour in this warm sun; and we could pack them away again before night.”
“Roger will never let you do that,” declared Ailwin. “Not a rag will he leave to anybody that you don’t stow away while he is out of sight. Never did I see such perverse children as you, and so thankless for God’s gifts. I should be ashamed to be no more grateful than you for what He puts into your very hands.”
Mildred looked at her brother now with a different face. She was perplexed and alarmed; but she saw that Oliver was not.
“Roger cannot carry off anything,” he replied. “He may bury and hide what he pleases; but they will all be somewhere about the Red-hill; and we can tell anybody who comes to fetch us off whatever we know about the goods.”
“Nobody will ever come and fetch us off,” said Ailwin, beginning to cry. “The people at a distance don’t care a straw what becomes of us; and you children here at hand are so perverse and troublesome, I don’t know how to bear my life between you.”
“If nobody comes to save us,” said Oliver, calmly, “I do not see what good this money and these fine clothes will do to Roger and you.”
“Roger and me! Pray what do you mean by that?”
“I mean that you and he are for taking these things that do not belong to us; and Mildred and I are against it. Only tell me this one thing, Ailwin. Do you believe that your cloak and stockings were sent in Nan Redfurn’s way, that she might take them? And do you think it would have been perverse in her not to run away with them?”