Mrs. Tulliver had not studied the question of exchange,
and was straining her mind after original ideas on
the subject.
“Pooh, pooh, pooh! you women don’t understand
these things,” said uncle Glegg. “There’s
no way o’ making it safe for Mr. and Mrs. Moss
but destroying the note.”
“Then I hope you’ll help me do it, uncle,”
said Tom, earnestly. “If my father shouldn’t
get well, I should be very unhappy to think anything
had been done against his will that I could hinder.
And I’m sure he meant me to remember what he
said that evening. I ought to obey my father’s
wish about his property.”
Even Mrs. Glegg could not withhold her approval from
Tom’s words; she felt that the Dodson blood
was certainly speaking in him, though, if his father
had been a Dodson, there would never have been this
wicked alienation of money. Maggie would hardly
have restrained herself from leaping on Tom’s
neck, if her aunt Moss had not prevented her by herself
rising and taking Tom’s hand, while she said,
with rather a choked voice:
“You’ll never be the poorer for this,
my dear boy, if there’s a God above; and if
the money’s wanted for your father, Moss and
me ’ull pay it, the same as if there was ever
such security. We’ll do as we’d be
done by; for if my children have got no other luck,
they’ve got an honest father and mother.”
“Well,” said Mr. Glegg, who had been meditating
after Tom’s words, “we shouldn’t
be doing any wrong by the creditors, supposing your
father was bankrupt. I’ve been thinking
o’ that, for I’ve been a creditor myself,
and seen no end o’ cheating. If he meant
to give your aunt the money before ever he got into
this sad work o’ lawing, it’s the same
as if he’d made away with the note himself; for
he’d made up his mind to be that much poorer.
But there’s a deal o’ things to be considered,
young man,” Mr. Glegg added, looking admonishingly
at Tom, “when you come to money business, and
you may be taking one man’s dinner away to make
another man’s breakfast. You don’t
understand that, I doubt?”
“Yes, I do,” said Tom, decidedly.
“I know if I owe money to one man, I’ve
no right to give it to another. But if my father
had made up his mind to give my aunt the money before
he was in debt, he had a right to do it.”
“Well done, young man! I didn’t think
you’d been so sharp,” said uncle Glegg,
with much candor. “But perhaps your father
did make away with the note. Let us go
and see if we can find it in the chest.”
“It’s in my father’s room.
Let us go too, aunt Gritty,” whispered Maggie.
A Vanishing Gleam
Mr. Tulliver, even between the fits of spasmodic rigidity
which had recurred at intervals ever since he had
been found fallen from his horse, was usually in so
apathetic a condition that the exits and entrances
into his room were not felt to be of great importance.
He had lain so still, with his eyes closed, all this
morning, that Maggie told her aunt Moss she must not
expect her father to take any notice of them.
