“Well, well,” replied Mr. Archer, smiling, “I must take the merchant’s risk of it. The money is now mixed.”
“I know my piece,” quoth Nance. “Come, let me see your silver, Mr. Archer. If I have to get it by a theft I’ll see that money,” she cried.
“Nay, child, if you put as much passion to be honest as the world to steal, I must give way, though I betray myself,” said Mr. Archer. “There it is as I received it.”
Nance quickly found the bad half-crown.
“Give him another,” she said, looking Jonathan in the face; and when that had been done, she walked over to the chimney and flung the guilty piece into the reddest of the fire. Its base constituents began immediately to run; even as she watched it the disc crumbled, and the lineaments of the King became confused. Jonathan, who had followed close behind, beheld these changes from over her shoulder, and his face darkened sorely.
“Now,” said she, “come back to table, and to-day it is I that shall say grace, as I used to do in the old times, day about with Dick”; and covering her eyes with one hand, “O Lord,” said she with deep emotion, “make us thankful; and, O Lord, deliver us from evil! For the love of the poor souls that watch for us in heaven, O deliver us from evil.”