While the old lady held forth thus in her little room which, although she did not know it, had once been the penitential cell of the Abbey, wherein for hundreds of years many unhappy ones had reflected in a very similar vein, she was engaged in trying key after key upon a stout oak chest. It was part of the ancient furniture of the place, that indeed in former days had served as the receptacle for hair shirts, scourges and other physical inducements to repentance and piety. Now it had a different purpose and held Mrs. Parsons’ best dresses, also, in a bandbox, an ornament preserved from her wedding-cake, for once in the far past she was married to a sailor, a very great black-guard, who came to his end by tumbling from a gangway when he was drunk. Among these articles was a tin tea-canister which, when opened, proved to be full of money; gold, silver and even humble copper, to say nothing of several banknotes. “Now, there you are, my dear, take what you like,” she said, “and pay it back if you wish, but if you don’t, it might have been worse spent.” And she pushed the receptacle, labelled “Imperial Pekoe,” towards him across the table, adding, “Drat those moths! There’s another on my best silk.” Godfrey burst out laughing and enjoyed that laugh, for it was his first happy moment since his return to England. “Give me what you like,” he said. So she extracted from the tea-tin a five-pound note, four sovereigns and a pound’s worth of silver and copper. “There,” she said, “that will do to begin with, for too much money in the pocket is a temptation in a wicked place like London, where there’s always someone waiting to share it. If it’s wanted there’s more where that came from, and you’ve only to write and say so. And now you have got the address and you’ve got the cash, and if you want to catch that last train it’s time you were off. If I took the same to-morrow night, why, it wouldn’t surprise me, especially as I want to hear all you’ve been a-doing in those foreign parts, tumbling over precipices and the rest. So good-bye, my dear, and God bless you. Lord! it seems only the other day that I was giving you your bottle.” Then they kissed each other and, having retrieved his alpenstock from the stick-house, Godfrey trudged back to the station, where he picked up his luggage and departed for London. Arriving at Liverpool Street rather late, he went to the Great Eastern Hotel, and after a good meal, which he needed, slept like a top. His reception in England had been bitter, but the young soon shake off their troubles, from which, indeed, the loving kindness of his dear old nurse already had extracted the sting.