After having drunk themselves into this condition, the two wretched creatures left the scene of their dissipation and endeavoured to toddle in the direction of the workhouse. They had not gone far, when two riotous boys, returning from their work to their homes, saw them reeling, and began to poke fun at them. The female pauper, smarting under a rude juvenile insult, endeavoured to rush forward and seize one of the delinquents, but instead of effecting the capture of the offender, fell flat on her face. Her companion endeavoured to pick her up, but rolled over; and while the sympathetic woman maundered, in her intoxication, words of consolation to the disfigured pauper, a policeman came up, and, observing their condition, took them both to the station-house. Next morning, on being brought before the magistrate, they told an artful tale, which that worthy functionary accepted as true, about having met an old friend, who treated them to a half-quartern of gin (they were sure it was no more), and it overcame them. They were discharged with an admonition, and toddled off to the house, at the gate of which they parted,--the one to find her home, like an independent woman; the other to sneak into her ward, and bear the gibes of her associates as best she might. It was some time before these women could meet again. When they did so, among other things, they talked about the fortune. Goody the pauper would have liked to have said nothing about the matter, but her companion was not to be put off in that way. She had a principle which led her to argue that what people said in their cups might be regarded as their most sincere belief, and that the words uttered in drunkenness had a truth not always attaching to the words of soberness. She persisted in her inquiries, and the result was that the pauper Goody took her friend into confidence. "Why, you see here," she said, "nobody knows what may turn up. I have been a lone woman these many years. I have got a son, leastways I believe I have, and some day _he_ may turn up, you see. I love that boy, and I have screwed and contrived for him; and in case any thing should happen to me, why I should like to have a little money by me; so I saved and put my money in a savings-bank. But, then, one day I told the doctor about my money, and he told me not to let it be there. I asked if so be he would be so kind as to look after it for me, which he said yes, he would do so. So I gave the money to him, and he lays it out, and gets me the best interest for my money, and I place that interest along with the money, which makes the money bigger, do you see, every year. I have done this for many years, and now I have no doubt I have got hard upon a thousand pounds." "Lor! You don't say so?" "Yes, 'pon my honour, I have." "Well, I wish I had got a hundred pounds, that's all I know." "A hundred is not much," said Goody, whose ideas were prone to expand on financial theories.