You may imagine that, with all these calls upon the hoard, the number of guineas was not at any time very great. There would often be only one, with a few silver coins on their way to be transformed into a second by-and-by. Mrs. Adderley always got her friend the peddler to take her silver and give her gold, for, she said, "one might be tempted to spend a shilling or two, when one would not break into a guinea." Sometimes there were three, and more than once there had been five—but at the time when my story opens there were actually ten! For Sam had saved up by degrees, and had repaid his mother what she had given him when he bought his horse, and the fruit and honey had been very abundant last year. They promised well now, and Mrs. Adderley, standing in her doorway on the evening in June of which I spoke, mentioned this pleasing fact to her good man Thomas, who was steadily eating bread, bacon, and eggs, and drinking milk, in the cheery kitchen. Beside him sat his son Sam, and on his knee was perched little Dolly, his grandchild, now three years old, and the pet of the whole household. Mrs. Adderley's cup and plate showed that she had been partaking of the meal; and there were another cup and plate on the table, not used as yet. "Come your ways in, woman," said Thomas, as he popped a specially crisp morsel of bacon into Dolly's ready mouth, "and finish your supper. I doubt Tom wants no supper to-night." "Dear, dear, Thomas, I wish the lad was home! I don't know how he expects to keep a place if he behaves like this!" "If he behaves like what?" inquired Thomas. "Come, my woman, you'll have to tell me." "Well—but you won't be hard upon him, Thomas, for he's a spirity, wild lad, and hardness will only harden him.—Oh, there's old Jerry Dwight. Tom's always after him, with his talk of Hull and Liverpool and sea-going that he's always gabbling about. Maybe he'll know.—Master Dwight! Master Dwight! Stop a bit!" She ran to the little gate. "Did you see our Tom to-day, Master Dwight?" "Did I see who?" said old Dwight, putting his hand up to his ear—only to gain time, for he heard well enough. "Our Tom! He hasn't come home yet." "Your Tom? Ah yes, Tom—young Thomas Adderley. A fine, strapping, stirring lad, is Tom. And don't you believe, Mrs. Adderley, that you'll ever make such another as Sam out of Tom. Tom has notions. You just give him a little money, and let him go seek his fortunes. Tom would—"