Captain Carew explained briefly that his boy had been returned to him about an hour ago, and that the promised reward had been given on his behalf to the policeman.
The man looked crestfallen.
"My wife told me," he said, "when I come back from the markets. She said somebody had lost a boy, and you had lost a girl. And your reward was the biggest, so I went for the girl."
Captain Carew put his hand in his pocket, and shook his head. To pay for Betty seemed to him to be publicly claiming her. Yet he could not help being glad that she was found.
"And she ain't nothin' to you?" said the man, most evidently disappointed.
"Nothing!" said Captain Carew firmly; "but I hear that she ran away with my boy—to make her fortune. She lives, I believe, in a small weather-board cottage a few yards further on."
He felt much stronger after he had spoken that sentence. Of course she was nothing to him. He walked to his library, and then looked over his shoulder, and saw the man just stooping over the little girl again. And then, for no reason at all, of course, he put his hand into his pocket again, drew out a sovereign and gave it to the man.
"To make up for your mistake," he said.
Then he went away and shut the library door, while the two went away.
"Little baggage!" he said, "she's nothing to me. John's the only grandchild I ever want."