“All right; and what else am I to tell them?”
“Why, that my master and the baron gave me the child twelve years and a half ago to put out to nurse with an Englishwoman. I went ashore at Brighton in a little boat with Pierre Legros, one of the sailors, and I walked across the downs with the child, and left it on John Shelley’s doorstep; then I told Monsieur Léon John had taken it in and promised to look after it. He took the address, and the only person I thought I had robbed was John Shelley, though I knew the baron would make it up to him when he heard of it.”
“Are they rich, George?” asked the old woman, taking a pinch of snuff as she peered at her son through the fog.
“Yes, I think so. The château is a beautiful place, and stands in a park.”
“Is that all I am to say?”
“Yes, leave the rest to the parson to decide; he will write to the baron in French very likely. You may tell them as soon as you like, for I shall be out of the country to-morrow.”
“I shall wait till you are gone; one day more can’t make any difference, and it is best to be on the safe side, then if they want to know where you are, I can say on your way to Australia, so there’ll be no fear of their catching you, though it is so long ago there isn’t much danger of that now.”
“Please yourself, and now I must be off. Here are five sovereigns for you, mother; they are honestly earned, so you need not be afraid to take them, and now I must say good-bye. How thick the fog is; there is no danger of anyone seeing me this evening; it is as much as I shall do to find my way down to the Brighton Road without breaking my neck in a chalk pie. Take care of yourself, mother; but you know these downs better than I do,” said George Hursey, kissing his mother.
“Ay, ay, lad, never fear for me; I have been out in worse fogs than this. Good-bye, God bless you,” and the old wool-gatherer strained her eyes till her son’s figure disappeared, as it very quickly did, in the fog.
She stood still for a minute or two after he had gone, gloating over the secret she had at last discovered, and muttering to herself again and again, “Baron de Thorens, Carolles, Normandy,” and then she too turned and walked slowly off through the fog in a different direction.