“You have never heard whether anything was found with you which might lead to your finding your relations?”
“No, no more has William Jones. He says maybe they’ll find me some day and reward him; but Mr. Monk says they were all drownded, and I ain’t got no friends ’cept him and William Jones.”
“Well, since he found you, I suppose he ought to know; and since you have no relations, Matt, and no claim upon anybody in the world, it was very kind of Mr. Monk to keep you, instead of sending you to the workhouse as he might have done.”
On this point Matt seemed rather sceptical.
“Well,” continued Brinkley, as he went on lightly touching up his work, “perhaps I have done my equestrian friend a wrong. Perhaps his unamiable exterior belies his real nature; perhaps he is good and kind, generous to the poor, willing to help the helpless—like you, for instance.”
“Is it him?” exclaimed Matt, “Monk of Monkshurst! Why, he don’t give nothin’ to nobody. No fear.”
“And yet, according to your own showing, he has helped to support you all these years—you, who have no claim whatever upon him.”
This was an enigma to which Matt had no solution. She said no more, but Brinkley, while he continued his painting, silently ruminated thus:
“It strikes me this puzzle would be worth unravelling if I could only find the key. Query, is the young person the key, if I but knew how to use her? Perhaps, since the amiable Monk evidently dislikes my coming into communication with her. But it would be useless to lay the case before her, since, if she is the key, she is quite unconscious of it herself.”
He threw down his brush, rose and stretched himself, and said—