“Ha! blessin’s on ’em both,” said Mr Bones, with a bland smile. “Come now, Tot, tell me all about the cottage—inside first, the rooms and winders, an’ specially the box of treasure. Then we’ll come to the garden, an’ so we’ll get out by degrees to the fields and flowers. Go ahead, Tot.”
It need scarcely be said that Abel Bones soon possessed himself of all the information he required, after which he sent Tottie home to her mother, and went his way.
Chapter Thirteen.
Miss Lillycrop Gets a Series of Surprises.
What a world this is for plots! And there is no escaping them. If we are not the originators of them, we are the victims—more or less. If we don’t originate them designedly we do so accidentally.
We have seen how Abel Bones set himself deliberately to hatch one plot. Let us now turn to old Fred Blurt, and see how that invalid, with the help of his brother Enoch, unwittingly sowed the seeds of another.
“Dear Enoch,” said Fred one day, turning on his pillow, “I should have died but for you.”
“And Miss Lillycrop, Fred. Don’t be ungrateful. If Miss Lillycrop had not come to my assistance, it’s little I could have done for you.”