Page:All the Year Round - Series 2 - Volume 1.djvu/415

 warded for our integrity, and turn into a deserving family. Shan't we, Mary?"

"Or the unknown will assure us that he intended it as a delicate little attention to Mary, and will beg her acceptance of the token," said Harry.

"My dears," urged the curate, "we have had almost enough of that joke; family wit is all very well, but it becomes depressing when the sun is allowed to go down upon it."

"Has it depressed you, old Polly?" said her brother. "You are all in the downs this evening."

"Well, I think I am," said Mary. "If this money really belonged to that kind man, I can't bear to think what a scrape his good-nature must have got him into."

"His gross carelessness rather," said Mr. Mackworth; "probably some banker's clerk. No doubt he has lost his place for it. Serve him right, I should say."

The next day was Sunday, and the ladies of the family betook themselves to the school for the space of time between breakfast and church.

Harry and the little boys joined them at church, and Mary soon saw that her eldest brother was suffering under some unusual excitement. The moment the sermon was over, he was out of church like a shot, and she found him waiting at the door with a newspaper in his hand. He seized her arm, and drew her off a little way, among the tombstones, while he eagerly explained:

"Look here, Polly, it is such a queer go! I was looking over the paper old Murch lent us this morning, and I lit on this advertisement. Look."

Mary read:

"Left in a Hansom cab, at the door of Grueby's Library, on the 21st ult.; a small brown paper parcel fastened with twine and with four seals in red wax, bearing the initials 'V. L.' in a monogram. Any one bringing the same with the contents intact to Messrs. Langley and Co's Bank, Lombard Street, City, or to the same Bank, High Street, Brigham, shall receive the above reward."

Before Harry and Mary had exchanged a word of comment, the curate was upon them, astonished and scandalised at seeing them apparently deep in the Times within the churchyard precincts. Mary gave him the paper, and pointed out the paragraph.

"That's a comfort," was his first exclamation: "now I am saved the trouble and expense of advertising. We must not lose a moment in restoring the money. I am doubtful whether it is not our duty to take it to Nettlehurst. I know Mr. Langley is there. It is not a very Sunday-like bit of business, but I can't bear to keep such a sum in our cottage with no proper lock-up place for it."

"Oh! by all means, papa," cried Mary, eagerly; "and might not I go with you? If that poor clerk has got into trouble, I might perhaps say something for him; at all events I might explain how it all happened; might I not?"

Mr. Mackworth decided that Mary's presence would be desirable, and they hastened home to eat a hurried dinner before setting out.

Evening service at Farley was not till six o'clock, so there was ample time for the walk to Nettlehurst, as both Mary and her father were quick walkers, and thought nothing of the three miles out, and three back, even in the dirt and gloom of a raw January afternoon. Mary was well defended from the weather, and enjoyed thoroughly the rare treat of a tête-à-tête with papa. The walk itself too was enjoyable. It lay through country which would have been lovely in summer and which was picturesque even in the dead of winter; the first part through flat green fields guarded by very impracticable stiles, and then they emerged into the road, which gradually mounted, until plantations and well-kept fences on each side of it showed that they were passing through some gentleman's grounds.

"Here is Nettlehurst," said Mr. Mackworth as, after following a low park wall for some distance, they found themselves close to tall iron gates, spick and span, and fresh and neat, as was the picturesque lodge, its trim garden, and the broad carriage drive. A woman, as tidy as everything else, in her Sunday garb, admitted them, and they walked on through well-kept plantations first, and then through a small park, somewhat dreary now, with its tufts of blackened heather and dead bracken. A flower-garden was laid out close to the house, which was a picturesque building, all gable ends. The flower-beds were tilled with branches of holly-evergreen, a device which neither Mary nor her father had ever seen before; and all along the south front of the house was a glittering conservatory giving a peep at gorgeous hues and graceful trailing forms, a welcome contrast to the bleak desolation of the ordinary out of door world.

"Very nice all this is," said the curate, approvingly; "you should have seen this place as I did in old Hathaway's time, when I was taking Morton's duty. Everything was going to wrack and ruin!"