Tod sent the magpie off, and came in. The first day we got home from school, Tod had rescued the magpie from Goody Picker’s grandson; he caught him pulling the feathers out of its tail; gave him sixpence for it, and brought it home. A poor, miserable, half-starved thing, that somebody had taught to say continually, “Now then, Peter.” Tod meant to feed it into condition; but the pater had not taken kindly to the bird; he said it would be better dead than alive.
“What was that I heard you boys talking of the other day, about some petty pilferings in your school?” he asked, abruptly. And we gave him the history.
“Well, as it seems to me, the same thing is going on here,” he continued, looking at us both. “Johnny, sit down; I can’t talk while you sway about like that.”
“The same thing going on here, sir?”
“I say that it seems so,” said the pater, thrusting both his hands deep into his trousers’ pockets, and rattling the silver in them. “Last Thursday, this day week, a bank-note lay on my table here. I just went round to the yard with Rimmell, and when I got back the note was gone.”
“Where did it go to?” asked Tod, practically.
“That is just the question—where? I concluded that it must have stuck to my coat in some unaccountable way, and got lost out-of-doors. I don’t conclude so now.”
Tod seemed to take the news in his usual careless fashion, and kept privately telegraphing signs to the magpie, sitting now on the old tree-stump opposite.
“Yes, sir. Well?”
“I think now, Joe, that somebody came in at these open doors, and took the note,” said the pater, impressively. “And I want to find out who it was.”