“Very strange,” agreed General Keeling. “Haigh, the more I think of it, the more I feel certain the Jew’s story was true. What conceivable motive could the man have for inventing it? He didn’t know that I had any particular interest in the poor fellows. Poor fellows! it’s blasphemy to call them that. Colin was a true martyr, if ever man was, and as for Ferrers——”
“Nothing in his life became him like the leaving of it,” supplied Sir Dugald.
“Nothing; but what a miracle it seems that he was able to seize the chance! I sometimes ask myself whether I could have done what either of them did—lived out those years of martyrdom like Colin, or gone back to certain torture and death like Ferrers. We are poor creatures, Haigh, the best of us, and those of whom we expect least sometimes shame us by what they do. Well, they have seen the end of it now, I suppose—‘in Paradise, in the presence of God.’ As for me,” he added with a half-laugh, as he turned to lock up the paper again, “I’m afraid I shouldn’t be happy, even in Paradise, if I couldn’t take a look at the frontier now and then, and make sure it was getting on all right. Why, Missy, what do you want?”
The little girl had crept up to them as they talked, and was standing with something clasped to her breast, looking in wonder at their moved faces. As her father spoke, she held out shyly to Sir Dugald a large octagonal tile, covered with a beautiful iridescent glaze, in a peculiarly delicate shade of turquoise. “For Godmamma,” she said, and retreated promptly.
“Why, Missy, isn’t that the slab on which you mix your medicines?” asked her father, capturing her. A nod was the only answer. “It’s one of her greatest treasures,” he explained to Sir Dugald. “The men find them sometimes in the ruined forts round here, but it’s very seldom they come on one unbroken, and the man who found this one brought it to her. You really want your Godmamma to have it, Missy?” Another nod. “Well, Haigh, I wouldn’t burden you with it if I didn’t think Lady Haigh would really like it. These things are thought a good deal of.”
“Certainly I will take it to her,” answered Sir Dugald. “I am sure she will like it because Missy sent it.”
The response was unexpected, for Missy wriggled away from her father’s arm, and held up her face to Sir Dugald to be kissed.
“That ought to be gratifying,” said General Keeling, laughing. Both men were perhaps not ungrateful to the child for diverting their thoughts from the tragedy with which they had been busied.
“Gratifying, sir? It’s better than millions of the brightest diamonds to be kissed by Miss Georgia Keeling.”
“As fond of Dickens as ever, I see. What should we do without him? But you and Missy certainly ought to be friends, for she knew all about Paul Dombey long ago. The doll your wife sent her is called Little Paul, and drags out a harrowing existence of all kinds of diseases complicated with gunshot-wounds, according to the cases Tarleton has in hospital. Sometimes I am cheered by hearing that he ‘ought to pull through,’ but generally he is following his namesake to an early grave. But I see your things have come, and you will like to see your quarters. This visit is a great pleasure, believe me, and I only wish it was going to be longer.”