"Hello! What ye got there?" cried Josiah.
"Why, father! massy sakes!" exclaimed Mrs. Ducklow.
As for Ducklow himself, he could not utter a word; but, dumb with consternation, he looked again in the envelope, and opened and turned inside out, and shook, with trembling hands, its astonishing contents. The bonds were not there: they had been stolen, and three copies of the "Sunday Visitor" had been inserted in their place.
Very early on the following morning a dismal-faced middle-aged couple might have been seen riding away from Josiah's house. It was the Ducklows returning home, after their fruitless, their worse than fruitless, journey. No entreaties could prevail upon them to prolong their visit. It was with difficulty even that they had been prevented from setting off immediately on the discovery of their loss, and travelling all night, in their impatience to get upon the track of the missing bonds.
"There'll be not the least use in going to-night," Josiah had said. "If they were stolen at the bank, you can't do anything about it till to-morrow. And even if they were taken from your own house, I don't see what's to be gained now by hurrying back. It isn't probable you'll ever see 'em again, and you may just as well take it easy,—go to bed and sleep on it, and get a fresh start in the morning."
So, much against their inclination, the unfortunate owners of the abstracted bonds retired to the luxurious chamber Laura gave them, and lay awake all night, groaning and sighing, wondering and surmising, and (I regret to add) blaming each other. So true it is, that "modern conveniences," hot and cold water all over the house, a pier-glass, and the most magnificently canopied couch, avail nothing to give tranquillity to the harassed mind. Hitherto the Ducklows had felt great satisfaction in the style their daughter, by her marriage, was enabled to support. To brag of her nice house and furniture and two servants was almost as good as possessing them. Remembering her rich dining-room and silver service and porcelain, they were proud. Such things were enough for the honor of the family; and, asking nothing for themselves, they slept well in their humblest of bed-chambers, and sipped their tea contentedly out of clumsy earthen. But that night the boasted style in which their "darter" lived was less appreciated than formerly: fashion and splendor were no longer a consolation.
"If we had only given the three thousan' dollars to Reuben!" said Ducklow, driving homewards with a countenance as long as his whip-lash. "'Twould have jest set him up, and been some compensation for his sufferin's and losses goin' to the war."
"Wal, I had no objections," replied Mrs. Ducklow. "I always thought he ought to have the money eventooally. And, as Miss Beswick said, no doubt it would 'a' been ten times the comfort to him now it would be a number o' years from now. But you didn't seem willing."
"I don't know! 'twas you that wasn't willin'!"