第143章

"I can't help it, sir. Thought is free, especially in this here compartment. Better speak one's mind than die o' the sulks. So shut your ear when my music jars. But one every other day is enough. If he won't come back for that, why, he must go, and I must look out for another; there's as good fish in the sea as ever came out of it. Still, I'll not deny I have a great respect for poor Joe. Oh, Mr. Penfold, what shall I do! Oh, oh, oh!"

"There, there," said Michael, "I'll put this into the _Times_ every day."

"You are a good soul, Mr. Penfold. Oh--oh, oh!"

When he had finished the advertisement in a clerkly hand, and she had finished her cry, she felt comparatively comfortable, and favored Mr. Penfold with some reflections.

"Dear heart, Mr. Penfold, how you and I do take to one another, to be sure. But so we ought; for we are honest folk, the pair, and has had a hard time. Don't it never strike you rather curious that two thousand pounds was at the bottom of both our troubles, yourn and mine? I might have married Joe, and been a happy woman with him; but the Devil puts in my head-- There you go again hammering! Life ain't worth having next door to that lodging-house. Drat the woman, if she must peck, why don't she go in the churchyard and peck her own grave; which we shall never be quiet till she is there. And these here gimcrack houses, they won't stand no more pecking at than a soap-sud. Ay, that's what hurts me, Mr. Penfold.

The Lord had given him and me health and strength and honesty; our betters had wed for love and wrought for money, as the saying is; but I must go again Nature, that cried 'Come couple'; and must bargain for two thousand pounds. So now I've lost the man, and not got the money, nor never shall. And, if I had, I'd burn-- Ah--ah--ah--ah--ah!"

This tirade ended in stifled screams of terror, caused by the sudden appearance of a human hand, in a place and in a manner well adapted to shake the stoutest laundress's nerves.

This hand came through the brick-work of the chimney-place, and there remained a moment or two. Then slowly retired, and as it retired something was heard to fall upon the shavings and tinsel of the fireplace.

Nancy, by a feminine impulse, put her hands before her face, to hide this supernatural hand; and, when she found courage to withdraw them, and glare at the place, there was no aperture whatever in the brick-work; and, consequently, the hand appeared to have traversed the solid material, both coming and going.

"Oh, Mr. Penfold," cried Nancy; "I'm a sinful woman. This comes of talking of the Devil arter sunset;" and she sat trembling so that the very floor shook.

Mr. Penfold's nerves were not strong. He and Nancy both huddled together for mutual protection, and their faces had not a vestige of color left in them.

However, after a period of general paralysis, Penfold whispered:

"I heard it drop something on the shavings."

"Then we shall be all in a blaze o' brimstone," shrieked Nancy, wringing her hands.

And they waited to see.

Then, as no conflagration took place, Mr. Penfold got up, and said he must go and see what it was the hand had dropped.

Nancy, in whom curiosity was beginning to battle with terror, let him go to the fireplace without a word of objection, and then cried out:

"Don't go anigh it, sir; it will do you a mischief; don't touch, it whatever. _Take the tongs."_

He took the tongs, and presently flung into the middle of the room a small oilskin packet. This, as it lay on the ground, they both eyed like two deer glowering at a piece of red cloth, and ready to leap back over the moon if it should show signs of biting. But oil-skin is not preternatural, nor has tradition connected it, however remotely, with the Enemy of man.

Consequently, a great revulsion took place in Nancy, and she passed from fear to indignation at having been frightened so.

She ran to the fireplace, and, putting her head up the chimney, screamed, "Heave your dirt where you heave your love, ye Brazen!"

While she was objurgating her neighbor, whom, with feminine justice, she held responsible for every act done in her house, Penfold undid the packet, and Nancy returned to her seat, with her mind more at ease, to examine the contents.

"Bank-notes!" cried Penfold.

"Ay," said Nancy incredulously, "they do look like bank-notes, and feel like 'em; but they ain't wrote like them. Bank-notes ain't wrote black like that in the left-hand corner."

Penfold explained.

"Ten-pound notes are not, nor fives; but large notes are. These are all fifties."

"Fifty whats?"

"Fifty pounds."

"What, each of them bits of paper worth fifty pounds?"

"Yes. Let us count them; 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18--Oh, Lord!--20. Why, that is two thousand pounds--just two thousand pounds. It is the very sum that ruined me; it did not belong to me, and it's being in the house ruined my poor Robert. And this does not belong to you. Lock all the doors, bar all the windows, and burn them before the police come."

"Wait a bit," said Nancy--"wait a bit." They sat on each side of the notes; Penfold agitated and terrified, Nancy confounded and perplexed.