"La bless me" said Nancy. with a sudden start "Why, is she talking about the thief as you and I catched putting his hand through the wall into my room, and made him fast again the policeman comes round?"
"Thief!" cried Mrs. James. "No more a thief than I am. Why, sure you wouldn't ever be so cruel! Oh, dear! Oh, dear! Spite goes a far length.
There, take an' kill me, do, and then you'll be easy in your mind. Ah, little my poor father thought as ever I should come down to letting lodgings, and being maltreated this way! I am--"
"Who is a maltreating of ye? Why, you're dreaming. Have a drop o' gin?"
"With them as takes the police to my lodger? It would choke me."
"Well, have a drop, and we'll see about it."
"You're very kind, ma'am, I'm sure. Heaven knows I need it! Here's wishing you a good husband; and toward burying all unkindness."
"Which you means drounding of it."
"Ah, you're never at a loss for a word, ma'am, and always in good spirits. But your troubles is to come. _I'm_ a widdy. You will let me see what is the matter with my lodger, ma'am?"
"Why not? We'll go and have a look at him."
Accordingly, the three women and the mite proceeded to the little room;
Nancy turned the gas on, and then they inspected the imprisoned hand.
Mrs. James screamed with dismay, and Nancy asked her dryly whether she was to blame for seizing a hand which had committed a manifest trespass.
"You have got the rest of his body," said she, "but this here hand belongs to me."
"Lord, ma'am, what could he take out of your chimbley, without 'twas a handful of soot? Do, pray, let me loose him."
"Not till I have said two words to him."
"But how can you? He isn't here to speak to--only a morsel of him."
"I can go into your house and speak to him."
Mrs. James demurred to that; but Nancy stood firm; Mrs. James yielded.
Nancy whispered her myrmidons, and, in a few minutes, was standing by the prisoner, a reverend person in dark spectacles, and a gray beard, that created commiseration, or would have done so, but that this stroke of ill-fortune had apparently fallen upon a great philosopher. He had contrived to get a seat under him, and was smoking a pipe with admirable sang-froid.
At sight of Nancy, however, he made a slight motion, as if he would not object to follow his imprisoned hand through the party-wall. It was only for a moment; the next, he smoked imperturbably.
"Well, sir," said Nancy, "I hopes you are comfortable?"
"Thank ye, miss; yes. I'm at a double sheet-anchor."
"Why do you call me miss?"
"I don't know. Because you are so young and pretty."
"That will do. I only wanted to hear the sound of your voice, Joe Wylie."
And with the word she snatched his wig off with one hand, and his beard with the other, and revealed his true features to his astonished landlady.
"There, mum," said she, "I wish you joy of your lodger." She tapped the chimney three times with the poker, and, telling Mr. Wylie she had a few words to say to him in private, retired for the present. Mrs. James sat down and mourned the wickedness of mankind, the loss of her lodger (who would now go bodily next door instead of sending his hand), and the better days she had by iteration brought herself to believe she had seen.
Wylie soon entered Nancy's house, and her first question was, "The 2,000 pounds, how did you get them?"
"No matter how I got them," said Wylie, sulkily. "What have you done with them?"
"Put them away."
"That is all right. I'm blest if I didn't think they were gone forever."
"I wish they had never come. Ill-gotten money is a curse." Then she taxed him with scuttling the _Proserpine,_ and asked him whether that money had not been the bribe. But Joe was obdurate. "I never split on a friend," said he. "And you have nobody to blame but yourself, you wouldn't splice without 2,000 pounds. I loved you, and I got it how I could. D'ye think a poor fellow like me can make 2,000 pounds in a voyage by hauling in ropes, and tying true-lovers' knots in the foretop?"
Nancy had her answer ready, but this remembrance pricked her own conscience and paved the way to a reconciliation. Nancy had no high-flown notions. She loved money, but it must be got without palpable dishonesty;
_per contra,_ she was not going to denounce her sweetheart, but then again she would not marry him so long as he differed with her about the meaning of the eighth commandment.
This led to many arguments, some of them warm, some affectionate; and so we leave Mr. Wylie under the slow but salutary influence of love and unpretending probity. He continued to lodge next door. Nancy would only receive him as a visitor.
