"Your brother gave the receipts all right," he said slowly, "but he omitted to enter the accounts as paid in the ledger."

"And the money? What did he do with the money?"

"The money is all right. The firm loses nothing."

"How do you mean? Tell me."

"The money was found in his room."

"Who found it?"

"I found it. It was only for a small amount."

"And paid it in? So that they lose nothing? So that they all know that Bernard had only been careless? That he was not a thief?"

"It's all right," he a.s.sured her. "There's nothing for you to worry about--now."

"You are sure you are keeping nothing back? You would not deceive me?

There is nothing more?"

Gibbon hesitated; he was not a man who told lies; and there was something more. "It seems he made debts--debts that out of his salary it was impossible for your brother to pay."

"Yes?"

"But he did pay them."

"He did? Then--?"

"You see, Miss Deleah, they're wishful to know where he got the money from to pay with."

She looked at him with knit brows anxiously for a minute, then her face cleared and a glad light was in her eyes. "Why, I can tell them!" she said, "I sent him the money to pay the debts."

"It was fifty pounds--about. _You_ sent it?"

"Oh, the money was not mine. It was Sir Francis Forcus's money. I asked him for it. You can tell them I sent it, Mr. Gibbon; but tell them no more. Sir Francis wished it to be a secret between him and me."

"Oh!" Gibbon said, and roughly shook her hand from his arm.

"You don't believe me?"

"I believe you fast enough; oh, yes."

"Then why are you angry?"

"You might have come to me. Why didn't you come to me?"

"Oh, I don't know," Deleah said. The several reasons she could have given it seemed kinder to withhold.

He pounced upon her, his eyes blazing. "I don't like these '_secrets_'

between a man and a girl."

Deleah drew back with a little offence. "If you knew at all what Sir Francis is like you would not say such a thing as that, Mr. Gibbon."

"What is he like?"

"Infinitely--infinitely above everything that is not kind and generous--and n.o.ble."

"He is just like any other man, except that he has more money."

Deleah put on her little air of dignity. "I thank you for telling me everything about my brother," she said. "I am so relieved that there was nothing worse to hear."

He watched her as she walked across the gloomy little square of landing and entered the other room. When she held her small head so poised on its long graceful throat, when the corners of her lips were ever so little turned down, the small rounded chin turned up, and the wonderful black eyelashes swept her cheeks he was afraid of her, little bit of a girl of less than half his age as she was; a girl who had been a child but two years ago, when he had come to the house. A girl whose lips as far as he had ever heard had never spoken one ungentle word; a girl who had pity on drowning flies, and carefully turned away her foot from the abject worm.

But then he was always trembling before her, either with love or fear.

The impulse to tell her that the purse-proud brewer was not the only man who had done the wretched brother a service for her sake possessed him.

The few pounds he had put, in order that he might find them there, in Bernard's room, had been infinitely more to him than the fifty pounds to Sir Francis Forcus. And he was one who saved his money anxiously for the end he had in view. Would she call him "kind and generous and n.o.ble" if he told her? He more than doubted it.

"We can't possibly walk about with Bernard in the dress of a private soldier," Bessie was saying when Deleah returned to the sitting-room. "We have come down, mama, I know, but we have not come down so low as that; and Bernard can't expect it of us."

"I shall buy him off, if I have to sell the clothes off my back," Mrs. Day said, oblivious of the fact that her wardrobe in the market might perhaps have fetched the sum of thirty shillings.

"I would not be in too great a hurry, mama."

"You think nothing about the sufferings of your poor brother, Deleah. My darling son."

"I do think of him. I think he will be very angry if this is done at once.

You must wait until he has had time to get sick of it."

"As soon as the shop is closed I shall go to Mr. Boult and beg of him to help me to buy him off," Mrs. Day persisted.

She rose up stiffly from her chair and stood beside it, her hand grasping its back, waiting for the strength to come to her to take up the burthen of business again. Ah, if only she had leisure for grieving, if she might lie on the sofa and cry, as Bessie was doing, what a luxury it would have been!

The a.s.sistant had been left to "get up" an order for her most important customer in her absence. He had put the wrong sugars into parcels, and the wrong tea. In reaching the tin of "foy gra.s.s" from the top shelf, he had knocked down and broken a bottle of piccalilli, catching its contents in the crystallised sugar drawer. Mrs. Day was very gentle with him, who was younger even than poor Bernard.

CHAPTER XVIII

The Dangerous Scrooge

Mrs. Day was spared the errand to Mr. George Boult on which she had been bent, for that gentleman, before the time for putting up shutters was reached, having had an interview with his Manchester man, sought the widow in her shop.

Since having been made a magistrate, it was to be observed that certain changes had taken place in the appearance and the attire of the successful draper. He affected now the light-coloured tweed suit of the country gentlemen, rather than the black decorous garments of trade. A deerstalker replaced the tall hat to which his head was accustomed, and he wore it, as was the fashion among the younger generation at that period, ever so little on one side. His short beard was trimmed to a point, his moustache turned upwards at the ends, on his hands were gloves of tawny-coloured leather. Altogether he now presented a figure which, in spite of the undue protuberance of stomach, and the shortness and thickness of neck, he had the satisfaction of knowing to be strangely rejuvenated and quite up-to-date.

"Business not very lively to-day, ma'am?" he said in his quick, hard way, looking round upon the empty shop.