“Then what was the good of the money?”
A crafty look came into the hollow eyes and overspread the wan features. “They’d have had me, they guardians, ef Oi dedn’t have money. Oi wasn’t a-gooin’ to die in the poorhouse like my feyther, time they sold him up. Ef ye got the brads, they can’t touch ye. Do, the Master ’ould git into trouble. They put mother and me sep’rit from feyther, and when Oi seen her cryin’ Oi swore in my liddle heart Oi’d die sooner than stay there or tarn ’prentice. Oi dropped through a window the night o’ feyther’s funeral—for the Master had thrashed me—but Oi’d promised mother Oi’d come back for her, and ’twarn’t many year afore she was livin’ with me upright in the cottage. Happen you seen her, though she never seen you.”
“Yes, I know,” said Jinny softly. “She was blind.”
“Cried her eyes out, to my thinkin’. But Oi says to her marnin’ and night, ‘Cheer up, mother,’ Oi says, ‘so long as we’ve got the dubs, they can’t touch us, and ef they parish gents tries to lay hands on me, they’ll git such a clumsy thump with the teapot they’ll know better next time.’ She never seen the teapot, mother dedn’t, but she used to waggle her fingers about in it and laugh like billy-o.”
Jinny felt nearer weeping as she culled these spoils of a lifetime. Many of the coins were curious; mintage of an earlier reign. She was peering in a cobwebbed corner when the barking of Nip as well as a familiar footstep in the clearing announced a welcome arrival. How glad she was Will had not been able to keep away! And then suddenly—at last—came the realization of her riches, of the solution of her financial problem!
“Quick! Quick!” whispered the old man hoarsely, and signed to her to hide the teapot. To soothe him she put it swiftly in her basket.
“You’re sure there’s nobody else ought to have it?” she asked anxiously.
“Oi ain’t got no friend ’cept you and the fox. And ye don’t catch him in the poorhouse. But Oi’ll die happy, knowin’ as Oi’ve saved you from it. Don’t let ’em come in!” he gasped, as a tapping began.
“It’s only young Mr. Flynt.”
“Willie, d’ye mean?”