“Well?” said Augusta, looking up inquiringly.
“Well, my dear, the very next afternoon the boy Jabez Clegg knocked at the door in Oldham Street with the shilling, which he said he had found in sweeping the library, and remembered seeing it on Miss Chadwick’s neck. Many a boy, at Easter, would have spent it in cakes or toffy.”
“I suppose, to use one of your favourite maxims, he must have thought ‘honesty the best policy,’” remarked her husband.
“Yes; and ‘duty its own reward’—for he refused the half-crown that Sarah offered him.”
Mr. Ashton took another pinch of snuff, with grave consideration, then put the box, after some deliberation, into his deep waistcoat pocket, and again flapped the snuff off ruffles and neck-cloth ends.
“Wouldn’t take the money, you say?”
“Would not take it,” his wife repeated, folding up the finished handkerchief.
After a pause, Mr. Ashton said, with his head on one side,—
“I think I shall look after that younker. What is he like?”
“Oh, that I cannot tell; I was not with them. But I think Sarah said he had got an ugly scar on one of his eyebrows.”