“Hush! hush!” interposed Mrs. Peckover; “don’t be so dreadful noisy, there’s a good man! or you’ll wake my brother up stairs. And, besides, where’s the use to make such a stir about what I done for your sister? Anybody else would have took as kindly to her as I did, seeing what distress she was in, poor soul! Here,” she continued, handing him back the beaver-skin roll; “here’s your money, and thank you for the offer of it. Put it up safe in your pocket again. We manage to keep our heads above water, thank God! and don’t want to do no better than that. Put it up in your pocket again, and then I’ll make bold to ask you for something else.” “For what?” inquired Mat, looking her eagerly in the face. “Just for this: that you’ll promise not to take little Mary from Mr. Blyth. Do, pray do promise me you won’t.” “I never thought to take her away,” he answered. “Where should I take her to? What can a lonesome old vagabond, like me, do for her? If she’s happy where she is--let her stop where she is.” “Lord bless you for saying that!” fervently exclaimed Mrs. Peckover, smiling for the first time, and smoothing out her gown over her knees with an air of inexpressible relief. “I’m rid of my grand fright now, and getting to breathe again freely, which I haven’t once yet been able to do since I first set eyes on you. Ah! you’re rough to look at; but you’ve got your feelings like the rest of us. Talk away now as much as you like. Ask me about anything you please--” “What’s the good?” he broke in, gloomily. “You don’t know what I wanted you to know. I come down here for to find out the man as once owned this,”--he pulled the lock of hair out of his pocket again--“and you can’t help me. I didn’t believe it when you first said so, but I do now.” “Well, thank you for saying that much; though you might have put it civiler--” “His name was Arthur Carr. Did you never hear tell of anybody with the name of Arthur Carr?” “No: never--never till this very moment.” “The Painter-man will know,” continued Mat, talking more to himself than to Mrs. Peckover. “I must go back, and chance it with the Painter-man, after all.” “Painter-man?” repeated Mrs. Peckover. “Painter? Surely you don’t mean Mr. Blyth?” “Yes, I do.” “Why, what in the name of fortune can you be thinking of! How should Mr. Blyth know more than me? He never set eyes on little Mary till she was ten year old; and he knows nothing about her poor unfortunate mother except what I told him.”