Tom Chandler nodded.
“But for winning that thirty shillings I could not have got up to London, unless somebody had lent me some,” ran on Dick, who, once set going, was a rare talker. “You can ask anyone at that pigeon match, sir, whether I was not there the whole time: so it is impossible I could have been at Worcester, changing a bank-note.”
The words brought to Mr. Paul a regret that he had not thought to ask that question of some one of the sportsmen: it would have set the matter at rest, so far as MacEveril was concerned. And the suspicion had been so apparently well grounded, as to prevent suspicion in other quarters.
Tom Chandler, standing beside Dick at Mr. Paul’s table, quietly laid a pencil upon it, as if intending to write something down. Dick took it up and looked at it.
“What a pretty pencil!” he exclaimed. “Is it gold?”
It should be understood that in those past days, these ornamental pencils were rare. They may be bought by the bushel now. And Tom Chandler would have been convinced by the tone, had he still needed conviction, that Dick had not seen any pencil like it before.
“Well,” struck in old Paul, a little repentant for having so surely assumed Dick’s guilt, and thankful on the captain’s account that it was a mistake: “if you promise to be steady at your work, young man, I suppose you may take your place at the desk again. This gentleman here is going a-roving this week,” pointing the feather-end of his pen at Tom Chandler, “for no one knows how long; so you’ll have to stick to it.”
“I know; I’ve heard,” laughed Dick. “I mean to get a few minutes to dash into the church and see the wedding. Hope you’ll not dismiss me for it, sir!”
“There, there; you go to your desk now, young man, and ask Mr. Hanborough what you must do first,” concluded the lawyer.
It was not the only time on that same day that Thomas Chandler displayed his pencil. Finding his theory, that Dick MacEveril possessed the fellow one, to be mistaken, he at once began to take every opportunity of showing it to the world—which he had not done hitherto. Something might possibly come of it, he thought. And something did.