he said. ’There may be a pardon, of course;—though
I shall never believe it till I see it. But though
there were twenty pardons she ought not to go back
to him. The pardon does not alter the crime,—and
whether he was married in Australia, or whether he
was not, she ought to think that he was, because the
jury has said so. If she had any feeling of feminine
propriety she would shut herself up and call herself
Miss Bolton.’
‘I don’t agree with you in the least,’
said the Squire; ’and I hope I may live to see
a dozen little Caldigates running about on that lawn.’
And there were a few words upstairs on the subject
between Mr. Smirkie and his wife—for even
Mrs. Smirkie and Aunt Polly at last submitted themselves
to Dick’s energy. ‘Indeed, then, if
he comes out,’ said the wife, ‘I shall
be very glad to see him at Plum-cum-Pippins.’
This was said in a voice which did not admit of contradiction,
and was evidence at any rate that Dick’s visit
to Babington had been successful in spite of the yellow
trousers.
The Fortunes of Bagwax
An altogether new idea had occurred to Bagwax as he
sat in his office after his interview with Sir John
Joram;—and it was an idea of such a nature
that he thought that he saw his way quite plain to
a complete manifestation of the innocence of Caldigate,
to a certainty of a pardon, and to an immediate end
of the whole complication. By a sudden glance
at the evidence his eye had caught an object which
in all his glances he had never before observed.
Then at once he went to work, and finding that certain
little marks were distinctly legible, he became on
a sudden violently hot,—so that the sweat
broke out on his forehead. Here was the whole
thing disclosed at once,—disclosed to all
the world if he chose to disclose it. But if
he did so, then there could not be any need for that
journey to Sydney, which Sir John still thought to
be expedient. And this thing which he had now
seen was not one within his own branch of work,—was
not a matter with which he was bound to be conversant.
Somebody else ought to have found it out. His
own knowledge was purely accidental. There would
be no disgrace to him in not finding it out.
But he had found it out.
Bagwax was a man who, in his official zeal and official
capacity, had exercised his intellect far beyond the
matters to which he was bound to apply himself in
the mere performance of his duties. Post-marks
were his business; and had he given all his mind to
postmarks, he would have sufficiently carried out
that great doctrine of doing the duty which England
expects from every man. But he had travelled beyond
postmarks, and had looked into many things. Among
other matters he had looked into penny stamps, twopenny
stamps, and other stamps. In post-office phraseology
there is sometimes a confusion because the affixed
effigy of her Majesty’s head, which represents
