“What tramp?” demanded Tod, straightening himself.
“A tramp that Master Johnny there must needs give hot ale to,” returned Molly. “I know what them tramps are worth. They’d pull rings out of ears with their own fingers, give ’em the chance: and perhaps this woman did, without the missis seeing her.”
Tod turned to me for an explanation. I gave it, and he burst into a derisive laugh, meant for me and the mater. “To think we could be taken in by such a tale as that!” he cried: “we should never see tramp, or half-crown, or perhaps the earring again.”
The Squire came home in the midst of the stir. He blustered a little, partly at the loss, chiefly at the encouragement of tramps, calling it astounding folly. Ordering Thomas to bring a lantern, he went stooping his old back down the path, and across to Coney’s and back again; not believing any one had searched properly, and finally kicking the snow about.
“It’s a pity this here snow’s on the ground, sir,” cried Thomas. “A little thing like an earring might easily slip into it in falling.”
“Not a bit of it,” growled the Squire. “That tramp has got the earring.”
“I don’t believe the tramp has,” I stoutly said. “I don’t think she was a tramp at all: and she seemed honest. I liked her face.”
“There goes Johnny with his ‘faces’ again!” said the Squire, in laughing mockery: and Tod echoed it.
“It’s a good thing you don’t have to buy folks by their faces, Johnny: you’d get finely sold sometimes.”