"I won't, I promise you. I think you a very honest fellow!"

"Then, sir, please continue to think me so, and don't offer me money!"

"Lest you should be tempted to take it?"

"No; lest I should annoy you by the use I made of it!"

"Tut, tut! I don't care what you do with it! You can't annoy me!"

He wrote a second cheque, blotted it, then finished the other, and held out both to Richard.

"I can't give you so much as the other poor beggars; you haven't the same claim upon me!" he said.

Richard took the cheques, looked at them, put the larger in his pocket, walked to the fire, and placed the other in the hottest cavern of it.

"By Jove!" cried the baronet, and again stared at him: he had seen his mother do precisely the same thing--with the same action, to the very turn of her hand, and with the same choice of the central gulf of fire!

Richard turned to sir Wilton, and would have thanked him again on behalf of Alice and Arthur, but something got up in his throat, and, with a grateful look and a bend of the head, he made for the door speechless.

"I say, I say, my lad!" cried sir Wilton, and Richard stopped.

"There's something in this," the baronet went on, "more than I understand! I would give a big cheque to know what is in your mind! What does it all mean?"

Richard looked at him, but said nothing: he was in some sort fascinated by the old man's gaze.

"Suppose now," said sir Wilton, "I were to tell you I would do whatever you asked me so far as it was in my power--what would you say?"

"That I would ask you for nothing," answered Richard.

"I make the promise; I say solemnly that I will give you whatever you ask of me--provided I can do it honestly," said the baronet.

"What a d.a.m.ned fool I am!" he thought with himself. "The devil is in me to let the fellow walk over me like this! But I must know what it all means! I shall find some way out of it!"

For one moment the books around him seemed to Richard to rush upon his brain like troops to the a.s.sault of a citadel; but the next he said--

"I can ask you for nothing whatever, sir; but I thank you from my heart for my poor friends, your children. Believe me I am grateful."

With a lingering look at his father, he left the room.

CHAPTER L. _DUCK-FISTS_.

The G.o.dless old man was strangely moved. He rose, but instead of ringing the bell, hobbled after Richard to the door. As he opened it, however, he heard the hall-door close. He went to it, but by the time he reached it, the bookbinder had turned a corner of the house, to go by a back-way to the spot where his grandfather was waiting for him.

He found him in his cart, immovably expectant, his pony eating the gra.s.s at the edge of the road. Before he got his head pulled up, Richard was in the cart beside him.

"Drive on, grandfather," he panted in triumph. "I've got it!"

"Got what, lad?" returned the old man, with a flash in his eyes, and a forward strain of his neck.

"What I wanted. Money. Twenty pounds."

"Bah! twenty pounds!" returned Simon with contempt, and a jerk of his head the other way.

He had himself noted Richard's likeness to his daughter, and imagined it impossible sir Wilton should not also see it.

"But of course," he went on, "twenty pounds will be a large sum to them, and give them time to look about, and see what can be done. And now I'll tell you what, lad: if the young man is fit to be moved when you go back, you just bring him down here--to the cottage, I mean--and it shan't cost him a ha'penny. I've a bit of a nest-egg as ain't chalk nor yet china; and Jessie is going to be well married; and who knows but the place may suit him as it did his sister! You look to it when you get home."

"I will indeed, grandfather!--You're a good man, grandfather: the poor things are no blood of yours!"

"Where's the odds o' that!" grunted Simon. "I reckon it was your G.o.d and mine as made 'em!"

Richard felt in his soul that, little reason as he had to be proud of his descent, he had at least one n.o.ble grandfather.

"You're a good man, grandfather!" he repeated meditatively.

"Middlin'," returned the old man, laughing. "I'm not so good by a long chalk as my maker meant me, and I'm not so bad as the devil would have me. But if I were the powers that be, I wouldn't leave things as they are! I'd have 'em a bit straightened out afore I died!"

"That shows where you come from, Mr. Wingfold would say; for that is just what G.o.d is always doing."

"I know the man; I know your Mr. Wingfold! Since you went, he's been more than once or twice to the smithy to ask after you. He's one o' the right sort, he is! He's a man, he is!--not an old woman in breeches!

My soul! why don't they walk and talk and look like men? Most on 'em as I've seen are no more like men than if they was drawn on the wall with a coal! If they was all like your Mr. Wingfold now! Why, the devil wouldn't hare a chance! I've a soft heart for the clergy--always had, though every now and then they do turn me sick!"

They were spinning along the road, half-way home, behind the little four-legged business in the shafts, when they became aware of a quick sharp trot behind them. Neither looked round: the blacksmith was minding his pony and the clergy, and the twenty pounds in Richard's heart were making it sing a new song. What a thing is money even, with G.o.d in it.

The horseman came alongside the cart, and slackened his pace!

"Sir Wilton wants to see Mr. Tuke again," he said. "He made a mistake in the cheque he gave him."

An arrow of fear shot through Richard's heart. What did it mean? Was the precious thing going to be taken from him? Was his hope to be destroyed and his heart left desolate? He took the cheque from his pocket and examined it. Simon had pulled up his pony, and they were standing in the middle of the highway, the old man waiting his grandson's decision.

Richard was not unaccustomed to cheques in payment of his work, and he could see nothing amiss with the baronet's: it was made payable to bearer, and not crossed: Alice could take it to the bank and get the money for it! The next moment, however, he noted that it was payable at a branch-bank in the town of Ba.r.s.et, near Mortgrange. The baronet, he concluded, had, with more care than he would have expected of him, thought of this, and that it would cause trouble, so had sent his man to bring him back, that he might replace the cheque with one payable in London. His heart warmed toward his father.

"I see!" he said. "I'm sorry to give you the trouble, grandfather, but I'm afraid we must go!"

Simon turned the pony's head without a word, and they went trotting briskly back to Mortgrange. Richard explained the matter as it seemed to him.

"I'm glad to find him so considerate!" said the old man. "It's a bad cheese that don't improve with age! Only men ain't cheeses!--If I'd brought up my girls better,--" he went on reflectively, but Richard interrupted him.

"You ain't going to hit my mother, grandfather!" said Richard.

"No, no, lad; I learned my manners better than that! Whatever I was going to say, I was thinking of my own faults and no one else's. But it's not possible we should be wise at the outset, and I trust the Maker will remember it. He'll be considerate, lad!--The Bible would call it _merciful_, but I don' care for parson-words! I like things that are true to sound true, just as any common honest man would say them!"

The moment he saw that Richard was indeed gone, the baronet swore to himself that the fellow was his own son. He was his mother all over!--anything but ugly, and far fitter to represent the family than the smooth-faced ape lady Ann had presented him with! But a doubt came: his late wife had a sister somewhere, and a son of hers might have stolen a likeness to his lady-aunt! The tradesman fellow knew of the connection, and pretended to himself not to think much of it!

"What _are_ we coming to, by Jove!" muttered the baronet. "The pride of the lower cla.s.ses is growing portentous!--No, the fellow is none of mine!" he concluded with a sigh.

Alas for his grip on lady Ann! The pincers had melted in his grasp, and she was gone! It _was_ a pity! If he had been a better husband to poor Ruby, he would have taken better care of her child, ugly as he was, and would have had him now to plague lady Ann! But stop! there was something odd about the child--something more than mere ugliness--something his nurse had shown him in that very room! By Jove! what was it? It had something to do with ducks, or geese, or swans, or pelicans! He had mentioned the thing to his wife, he knew, and she was sure to have remembered it! But he was not going to ask her! Very likely she had known the fellow by it, and therefore sent him out of the house!--Yes!

yes! by Jove! that was it! He had webs between his fingers and toes!--He might have got rid of them, no doubt, but he must see his hands!