“Yes, and a tanner apiece on ’em, too. But don’t you be afraid, he don’t get none out of me, not if I swings for it.”
“You can go out for a run, Love,” said Reginald. “Come back in an hour. I want to be alone.”
“You aren’t a-giving me the sack?” asked the boy with falling countenance.
“No, no.”
“And you ain’t a-goin’ to commit soosanside while I’m gone, are yer?” he inquired, with a suspicious glance at Reginald’s blanched face.
“No. Be quick and go.”
“’Cos if you do, they do say as a charcoal fire—”
“Will you go?” said Reginald, almost angrily, and the boy vanished.
I need not describe to the reader all that passed through the poor fellow’s mind as he paced up and down the bare office that morning. The floodgates had suddenly been opened upon him, and he felt himself overwhelmed in a deluge of doubt and shame and horror.
It was long before he could collect his thoughts sufficiently to see anything clearly. Why Mr Medlock should take the trouble to prevent his home letters reaching their destination was incomprehensible, and indeed it weighed little with him beside the fact that the man who had given him his situation, and on whom he was actually depending for his living, was the same who could bribe his office-boy to steal his letters. If he were capable of such a meanness, was he to be trusted in anything else? How was Reginald to know whether the money he had regularly remitted to him was properly accounted for, or whether the orders were being conscientiously executed?