"Ah!" continued Carry, incapable of replying to Giacomo's philosophy, and judiciously changing her attack, "whenever you went to buy anything he never spoke up to you like—there was always an underhand look about him; and then his living alone as he did with nobody but that old woman with him."
"He always sold good leather," continued Mr. Cattle, who planted both his elbows on the table, and placed his head in his hands in a fit of abstraction, much perplexed by this apparent contradiction in Cutts's character.
"Sold good leather," retorted his wife with great sharpness, as if in contempt of her husband's stupidity; "sold good leather—of course he did. That was part of his plan to make people believe he was an honest man. Besides, if he hadn't, how could he have got rid of his stock as he did. Do you recollect," she proceeded with increasing asperity, as became a Cowfold matron, "as it was him as got up that petition for that Catchpool gal as was going to be hanged for putting her baby in the pond?"
"His father," quoth Mr. Cattle, inclining again to his wife's side, "had a glass eye, and I've heerd his mother was a Papist."
"Well," interrupted Miriam at last, "what if he did set fire to his house?"
They all looked amazed. "What if he did! what if he did!" repeated Mr.
Cattle; "why, it's arson, that's all."
"Oh, that's saying the same thing over again."
"He'll be transported, that's 'what if he did,'" interposed Mrs. Cattle.
"I suppose," said Miriam, "he wanted to get money out of the Insurance Office. It was wrong, but he hasn't done much harm except to the office, and they can afford it."
They were all still more amazed, and justly, for Miriam, amongst her other peculiarities, did not comprehend how society necessarily readjusts the natural scale of reward and punishment.