"And what will Mary Swanwick do with this money won in evil ways?"
"I do not know."
"It is well that she should be counseled."
"Do you not think, sir, as a man of sense and a gentleman and more, that it may be well to leave a high-minded woman to dispose of this matter? If she goes wrong, will it not then be time to interfere? There is not a ha'-penny of greed in her. Let her alone."
The Quaker sat still a moment, his lean figure bent over his staff. "Thou art right," he said, looking up. "The matter shall rest, unless worse come of it."
"Why not see Mr. Langstroth about it?" said the German, mischievously inclined. "He is of Friends, I presume."
"He is not," said Pemberton. "He talked in the war of going forth from us with Wetherill, but he hath not the courage of a house-fly. His doings are without conscience, and now he is set in his ways. He hath been temperately dealt with long ago and in vain. An obstinate man; when he sets his foot down thou hast to dig it up to move him. I shall not open the matter with Josiah Langstroth. I have been led to speak harshly. Farewell."
When Mrs. Swanwick heard of this and had talked of it to Margaret, the Pearl said, "We will not take the money, and uncle cannot; and it may go." Her decisiveness both pleased and astonished the mother. It was a maturing woman who thus anticipated Schmidt's advice and her own, and here for a little while the matter lay at rest.
Not all Friends, however, were either aware of what Pemberton had learned or were fully satisfied, so that one day Daniel Offley, blacksmith, a noisy preacher in meetings and sometimes advised of elders to sit down, resolved to set at rest alike his conscience and his curiosity. Therefore, on a February afternoon, being the 22d, and already honored as the birthday of Washington, he found Margaret alone, as luck would have it. To this unusual house, as I have said, came not only statesmen, philosophers, and the rich. Hither, too, came the poor for help, the lesser Quakers, women and men, for counsel or a little sober gossip. All were welcome, and Offley was not unfamiliar with the ways of the house.
He found Margaret alone, and sitting down, began at once and harshly to question her in a loud voice concerning the story of her worldly vanity, and asked why she could thus have erred.