‘I came to see a relation.’
‘Here, on these premises?’
‘At the lodge. The woman you’ve chosen for your lodge-keeper is my mother.’
‘Rebecca Mason?’
‘Yes.’
Churchill took a turn or two up and down the room thoughtfully.
‘Since you’ve been so uncommonly kind to her, perhaps you’ll strain a point in my favour,’ said the gipsy. ‘I shouldn’t have tried to rob you if I hadn’t been driven to it by starvation. It goes hard with a man when he has a wolf gnawing his vitals, and stands outside an open window and sees a lot of women with thousands of pounds on their neck, in the shape of blessed gems that do no more real good to any one than the beads our women bedizen themselves with. And then he sees the old ivy roots are thick enough to serve for a ladder, and the windows upstairs left open and handy for him to walk inside. That’s what I call temptation. Perhaps you were outside the good things of this world at some time of your life, and can feel for a poor wretch like me.’
‘I have known poverty,’ answered Churchill, wondrously forbearing towards this vagrant, ‘and endured it?’
‘Yes, but you hadn’t to endure it for ever. Fortune was kind to you. It isn’t often a man drops into such a berth as this by a fluke. You’ve got your property, and you may as well let me off easily, for my mother’s sake?’
‘You don’t suppose your mother is more to me than any other servant in my employ,’ said Churchill, turning upon him sharply.