"Give me a chance Constantia Chatter," said Giles, using the name Constance had been dubbed when, a little tot, she ceaselessly used her new accomplishment of talking. "We had no trouble, no. We found the thief and made him confess what we already knew, that he was the master's cat's paw. Jones had to disgorge; he could not hold the papers without paying too heavy a penalty. So here they are. Why don't you take them?"
"I take them?" puzzled Constance, accepting them as Giles thrust them into her hand. "Do you want me to put them away for you? Are you not coming to dinner? There is not enough time to go to work before noon. The sun was not two hours from our noon mark beside the house when I left it."
"I suppose I am going to dinner," said Giles. "I am ready enough for it. No, I don't want you to put the papers away for me. You can do with them what you like. I should advise your giving them to Father, since they are his, but that is as you will. I give them into your hands."
"Giles, Giles!" cried Constance, in distress, instantly guessing that this meant that Giles was intending to hold aloof from a part in rejoicing over the recovery.
"Give them to Father yourself. How proud of you he will be that you ferreted out the thief and went so bravely, with only John, to demand them for him! It is not my honour, and I must not take it."
"Oh, as to honour, you got the first clue from Damaris, if there's honour in it, but for that I do not care. I did the errand when you sent me on it, or opened my way. However it came about I will not give the papers to my father. In no wise will I stoop to set myself right in his eyes. Perhaps he will say that the whole story is false, that I did not get the papers on the ship, but had them hidden till fear and an uneasy conscience made me deliver them up, and that you are shielding your brother," said Giles, frowning as he turned from Constance.
"And I thought now everything would be right!" groaned the girl—her lips quivering, tears running down her cheeks. "Giles, dear Giles; don't, don't be so bitter, so unforgiving! It is not just to Father, not just to yourself, to me. It isn't right. Giles! Will you hold this grudge against the father you so loved, and forget all the years that went before, for a miserable day when he half harboured doubt of you, and that when he was torn by influence, tormented till he was hardly himself?"
"Now, Constance, there is no need of your turning preacher," Giles said, harshly.
"If you like to swallow insult, well and good. It does not matter about a girl, but a man's honour is his chiefest possession. Take the papers, and prate no more to me. My father wanted them; there they are. He suspected me of stealing them; I found the thief. That's all there is about it. What is there to-day to eat? An early row makes a man hungry. Art ready, Jack? We will go to the house, by your leave, pretty Sis. Sorry to see your eyes reddening, but better that than other harm."
Constance hesitated as Giles went up the beach, taking John with him. For a moment she debated seeking Captain Standish, giving him the papers, and asking him to be intermediary between her father and this headstrong boy, who talked so largely of himself as "a man," and behaved with such wrong-headed, childish obstinacy. But a second thought convinced her that she herself might serve Giles better than the captain, and she took her way after her brother, beginning to hope, true to herself, that her father's pleasure in recovering the papers, his desire to make amends to Giles, would express itself in such wise that they would be drawn together closer than before the trouble arose.