shawl over her head, entered the room.
"We was jest telling about our loss, Reuben's loss," said Mrs. Ducklow in a manner which betrayed no little anxiety to conciliate that terrible woman.
"Very well! don't let me interrupt." And Miss Beswick, slipping the shawl from her head, sat down.
Her presence, stiff and prim and sarcastic, did not tend in the least to relieve Mr. Ducklow from the natural embarrassment he felt in giving his version of Reuben's loss. However, assisted occasionally by a judicious remark thrown in by Mrs. Ducklow, he succeeded in telling a sufficiently plausible and candid-seeming story.
"I see! I see!" said Reuben, who had listened with astonishment and pain to the narrative. "You had kinder intentions towards me than I gave you credit for. Forgive me, if I wronged you!" He pressed the hand of his adopted father, and thanked him from a heart filled with gratitude and trouble. "But don't feel so bad about it. You did what you thought best I can only say, the fates are against me."
"Hem!" coughing, Miss Beswick stretched up her long neck and cleared her throat "So them bonds you had bought for Reuben was in the house the very night I called!"
"Yes, Miss Beswick," replied Mrs. Ducklow; "and that's what made it so uncomfortable to us to have you talk the way you did."
"Hem!" The neck was stretched up still farther than before, and the redoubtable throat cleared again. "'Twas too bad! Ye ought to have told me. You'd actooally bought the bonds,—bought 'em for Reuben, had ye?"
"Sartin! sartin!" said Ducklow.
"To be sure!" said Mrs. Ducklow.
"We designed 'em for his benefit, a surprise, when the right time come," said both together.
"Hem! well!" (It was evident that the Beswick was clearing her decks for action.) "When the right time come! yes! That right time wasn't somethin' indefinite, in the fur futur', of course! Yer losin' the bonds didn't hurry up yer benevolence the least grain, I s'pose! Hem! let in them boys, Sophrony!"
Sophronia opened the door, and in walked Master Dick Atkins, (son of the brush-burner,) followed, not without reluctance and concern, by Master Taddy.
"Thaddeus! what you here for?" demanded the adopted parents.
"Because I said so," remarked Miss Beswick, arbitrarily. "Step along, boys, step along. Hold up yer head, Taddy, for ye a'n't goin' to be hurt while I'm around. Take yer fists out o' yer eyes, and stop blubberin'. Mr. Ducklow, that boy knows somethin' about Reuben's cowpon bonds."
"Thaddeus!" ejaculated both Ducklows at once, "did you touch them bonds?"
"Didn't know what they was!" whimpered Taddy.
"Did you take them?" And the female Ducklow grasped his shoulder.
"Hands off, if you please!" remarked Miss Beswick, with frightfully gleaming courtesy. "I told him, if he'd be a good boy, and come along with Richard, and tell the truth, he shouldn't be hurt. If you please," she repeated, with a majestic nod; and Mrs. Ducklow took her hands off.
"Where are they now? where are they?" cried Ducklow, rushing headlong to the main question.
"Don't know," said Taddy.
"Don't know? you villain!" And Ducklow was rising in wrath. But Miss Beswick put up her hand deprecatingly.
"If you please!" she said, with grim civility; and Ducklow sank down again.
"What did you do with 'em? what did you want of 'em?" said Mrs. Ducklow, with difficulty restraining an impulse to wring his neck.
"To cover my kite," confessed the miserable Taddy.
"Cover your kite! your kite!" A chorus of groans from the Ducklows. "Didn't you know no better?"
"Didn't think you'd care," said Taddy. "I had some newspapers Dick give me to cover it; but I thought them things 'u'd be pootier. So I took 'em, and put the newspapers in the wrapper."
"Did ye cover yer kite?"
"No. When I found out you cared so much about 'em, I dars'n't; I was afraid you'd see 'em."
"Then what did you do with 'em?"
"When you was away, Dick come over to sleep with me, and I—I sold 'em to him."
"Sold 'em to Dick!"
"Yes," spoke up Dick, stoutly, "for six marbles, and one was a bull's-eye, and one agate, and two alleys. Then, when you come home and made such a fuss, he wanted 'em ag'in. But he wouldn't give me back but four, and I wa'n't going to agree to no such nonsense as that."
"I'd lost the bull's-eye and one common," whined Taddy.
"But the bonds! did you destroy 'em?"
"Likely I'd destroy 'em, after I'd paid six marbles for 'em!" said Dick. "I wanted 'em to cover my kite with."
"Cover your—oh! then you've made a kite of 'em?" said Ducklow.
"Well, I was going to, when Aunt Beswick ketched me at it. She made me tell where I got 'em, and took me over to your house jest now; and Taddy said you was over here, and so she put ahead, and made us follow her."
Again, in an agony of impatience, Ducklow demanded to know where the bonds were at that moment.
"If Taddy'll give me back the marbles," began Master Dick.
"That'll do!" said Miss Beswick, silencing him with a gesture. "Reuben will give you twenty marbles; for I believe you said they was Reuben's bonds, Mr. Ducklow?"
"Yes, that is"–stammered the adopted father.
"Eventooally," struck in the adopted mother.
"Now look here! What am I to understand? Be they Reuben's bonds, or be they not? That's the question!" And there was that in Miss Beswick's look which said, "If they are not Reuben's, then your eyes shall never behold them more!"
"Of course they're Reuben's!" "We intended all the while"–"His benefit"–"To do jest what he pleases with 'em," chorused Pa and Ma Ducklow.
"Wal! now it's understood! Here, Reuben, are your cowpon bonds!"
And Miss Beswick, drawing them from her bosom, placed the precious documents, with formal politeness, in the glad soldier's agitated hands.
"Glory!" cried Reuben, assuring himself that they were genuine and real. "Sophrony, you've got a home! Ruby, Carrie, you've got a home! Miss Beswick! you angel from the skies! order a bushel and a half of marbles for Dick, and have the bill sent to me! Oh, Pa Ducklow! you never did a nobler or more generous thing in your life. These will lift the mortgage, and leave me a nest-egg besides. Then when I get my back pay, and my pension, and my health again, we shall be independent."
And the soldier, overcome by his feelings, sank back in the arms of his wife.
"We always told you we'd do well by ye, you remember?" said the Ducklows, triumphantly.
The news went abroad. Again congratulations poured in upon the returned volunteer. Everybody rejoiced in his good fortune,—especially certain rich ones who had been dreading to see Miss Beswick come round with her proposed subscription-paper.
