"Oh! a little ugly bloke enough--not too well dressed. Your father won't turn out to be a duke or markis, if he ever turns up agin and brings me my five pounds." "But you will not tell him where I live?--he may be a bad, cruel man--my mother ran away from him because he treated her ill, I have heard her say. Oh! don't tell him where I live--I am happy and contented here." Mrs. Watts brightened up with a new idea. "You must make it a five pun note, then, instead of him, and I'll tell him I can't find yer when he comes back to take you home with him. You've saved money, I daresay, by this time, and five pounds ain't much to stand." Mattie recovered her composure when it came to the money test; there was a motive for Mrs. Watts' appearance there, she thought; after all it was an idle story, a foolish scheme to extort money, which Mattie saw through now. "I shall not give you any money--not five pence, Mrs. Watts." "Leave it alone, then," was the sharp reply; "you can't leave here, and I'll bring him to you, if he ever comes agin. I didn't come to get money out of yer, but to keep my eye upon you for your father's sake. And you'll never take a step away from this place, right or left, but what I'll know it--there's too many on us about here for you to steal away." "I do not intend to steal away," cried Mattie. "And considerin' that I've come out of kindness, and to give you a piece of news, you might have said thankee for it--bad luck to you, Mattie Gray." "Oh! bad luck will not come to me at your wish." The old woman paused at the door, and shook her key at her. "I never wished bad luck to any living soul, but what it came. Now think of that!" She went out of the shop and along Great Suffolk Street at a smart pace--like a woman who had suddenly remembered something and started off in a hurry after it. Mattie was perplexed at the interview; doubtful if any truth had mixed itself with Mrs. Watts' statement, and at a loss to reconcile all that she had heard with fabrication. Even from Mrs. Watts' lips it sounded like truth; the woman seemed in earnest, her offer to take five pounds for her silence an impromptu thought, originated by Mattie's sudden fear. "What can it mean?--what can it mean?" reiterated Mattie to herself; "was it unfair to doubt her?--she thought so, or she would not have wished me bad luck so evilly at the last?" She sat down behind the counter to reflect upon the strangeness of the incident, and was still revolving in her mind the facts or falsities connected with it, when Ann Packet burst from the parlour door into the shop, with eyes distended. "Have you been up-stairs, Mattie?" "Upstairs, Ann!--no." "Have you been asleep?" "No." "Oh, lor!--quite sure--not a moment!" "No--no--what has happened!" "Somebody's been up-stairs into all the rooms, into yourn, too, where the money's put for Mr. Wesden--and--and broken open the drawer." "And the cash box that I keep there?" "Open, and EMPTY!"