‘There!’ said Shadrach complacently. ‘I told ’ee, dear, I’d do it; and have I done it or no?’
Somehow her face, after the first excitement of possession, did not retain its glory.
‘It is a lot of gold, indeed,’ she said. ‘And—is this all?’
‘All? Why, dear Joanna, do you know you can count to three hundred in that heap? It is a fortune!’
‘Yes—yes. A fortune—judged by sea; but judged by land—’
However, she banished considerations of the money for the nonce. Soon the boys came in, and next Sunday Shadrach returned thanks to God—this time by the more ordinary channel of the italics in the General Thanksgiving. But a few days after, when the question of investing the money arose, he remarked that she did not seem so satisfied as he had hoped.
‘Well you see, Shadrach,’ she answered, ‘we count by hundreds; they count by thousands’ (nodding towards the other side of the Street). ‘They have set up a carriage and pair since you left.’
‘O, have they?’
‘My dear Shadrach, you don’t know how the world moves. However, we’ll do the best we can with it. But they are rich, and we are poor still!’
The greater part of a year was desultorily spent. She moved sadly about the house and shop, and the boys were still occupying themselves in and around the harbour.