Debt, Imprisonment for -- Fiction; London (England) -- History -- 18th century -- Fiction
"Cry on, pretty," he said, sitting beside her, and with a tear in his
own eye. "Cry on: to cry is natural. Thou hast lost the best and most
Christian father that ever girl had; therefore cry on till thou art
tired. Let the tears fall. Don't mind me. Out handkerchief. So good
a scholar shall we never see again. Cry on, if thou hast only just
begun, should it bring thee comfort. Nor ever shall we hear so good a
preacher. When thou hast finished let me have my say. But do not hurry."
Even at the very saddest, when tears flow as unceasingly as the
fountains in the Land of Canaan, the sight of an elderly gentleman
sitting on a bench beneath a mulberry-tree, his hat beside him, his wig
in his hands for coolness, his stick between his legs, and his face
composed to a decent position, waiting till one had finished, would be
enough to make any girl stop crying. Kitty felt immediately inclined to
laugh; dried her eyes, restrained her sobs, and pulled out her father's
will, which she gave to Sir Robert to read.
He read it through twice, slowly, and then he hummed and coughed before
he spoke--
"A good man, Kitty child. See that thou forget not his admonitions. I
would he were here still to admonish us all. Sinners that we were, to
heed his voice no better. And now he is gone--he is gone. Yet he was a
younger man than I, by ten years and more, and I remain." Here he put
on his wig, and rose. "As for this money, child, let us lose no time
in making that safe, lest some thief should rob thee of it. A hundred
guineas! And twenty more with Farmer Goodpenny! And this money waiting
at the publishers![A] Verily thou art an heiress indeed!"
In the bedroom, at the head of the great bed, they found beneath the
mattress a long narrow box secretly let into the panel close to the
great cross-beam. I say secretly, but it was a secret known to all
the world. Carpenters always made those secret hiding-places in beds,
so that had there been a robber in the house he would have begun by
searching in that place. Sir Robert knew where to find the spring, and
quickly opened the box.
Within it lay two canvas bags, tied up. Could bags so little hold so
great a sum! Sir Robert tossed them into his pockets as carelessly as
if they were bags of cherries.
"Now, little maid," said he, sitting on the bed, "that money is safe;
and be sure that I shall call on Farmer Goodpenny to-morrow. Let me
know what is to be done about thy father's wish that thou shouldst go
to London?"
"It is his injunction, sir," said Kitty gravely. "I must obey his will."
"Yet thy father, child, did not know London. And to send a young
girl like thyself, with a bag of guineas about thy neck, to ask in a
coffee-house for the address of a clergyman is, methinks, a wild-goose
sort of business. As for Dr. Shovel, I have heard the name--to be sure,
it cannot be the same man----" he stopped, as if he would not tell me
what it was he had heard.
"It is my father's command," she repeated.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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