"In Matiss's charge. You'd like to be present, I suppose, at the time of its being opened?"
"I can take your word," returned John Massingbird. "This does not surprise me. I have always had an impression that the codicil would turn up."
"It is more than I have had," dissented Jan.
As if by common consent, they spoke no further on the subject of the abstraction and its guilty instrument. It was a pleasant theme to neither. John Massingbird, little refinement of feeling that he possessed, could not forget that Dr. West was his mother's brother; or Jan, that he was his late master, his present partner—that he was connected with him in the eyes of Deerham. Before they had spoken much longer, they were joined by Lionel.
"I shall give you no trouble, old fellow," was John Massingbird's salutation. "You gave me none."
"Thank you," answered Lionel. Though what precise trouble it lay in John Massingbird's power to give him, he did not see, considering that things were now so plain.
"You'll accord me house-room for a bit longer, though, won't you?"
"I will accord it you as long as you like," replied Lionel, in the warmth of his heart.
"You know I would have had you stop on here all along," remarked Mr. Massingbird; "but the bar to it was Sibylla. I am not sorry the thing's found. I am growing tired of my life here. It has come into my mind at times lately to think whether I should not give up to you, Lionel, and be off over the seas again. It's tame work, this, to one who has roughed it at the diggings."
"You'd not have done it," observed Jan, alluding to the giving up.