“Best let sleepin’ dogs be,” said he.
There was some silver loose in his trousers’ pocket, and he was fumbling with it, and looking hard at Mildred as he spoke to her. Sometimes, between his finger and thumb, he held the shilling—sometimes the half-crown. He was mentally deciding which to part with, and it ended by his presenting Mildred with the shilling, and recommending her to apply this splendid “tip” to the purchase of tea.
Some people experience a glow after they have done a great benevolence; as he walked into the stable-yard, Harry experienced a sensation, but it wasn’t a glow, a chill rather. Remembering the oblique look with which she eyed the silver coin in her dark palm, and her scant thanks, he was thinking what a beast he was to part with his money so lightly.
Mildred Tarnley cynically muttered to herself in the kitchen—
“‘Farewell frost,
Nothing got nor nothing lost.’
Here’s a gift! Bless him! I mind the time a Fairfield would a’ been ashamed to give an old servant such a vails. Hoot! what’s the world a comin’ to? ’Tis time we was a goin’. But Master Harry was ever the same—a thrifty lad he was, that looked after his pennies sharply,” said old Mildred Tarnley, scornfully; and she dropped the coin disdainfully into a little tin porringer that stood on the dresser.
And Tom came in, and the doors were made sure, and Mildred Tarnley made her modest cup of tea, and all was subsiding for the night.
But Harry’s words had stricken Alice Fairfield. Perhaps those viewless arrows oftener kill than people think of. Up in her homely room Alice now lay very ill indeed.