conscience as well as curiosity. In her palm lay a
guinea-piece: which meant that (at the very least, or the current
rate of exchange) she had swindled a child out of twenty shillings
and tenpence. This would never do, of course. . . . Yet she could
not very well follow in at this moment and explain to Mrs Pengelly.

Moreover, here was a mystery connected with Nanjivell. In the midst
of her embarrassment she felt a secret assurance that she was in
luck; that she held a clue; that she had in her grasp something to
open Mrs Polsue's eyes in envy.

"The first thing," she decided, "is to take this piece of gold to the
child's mother, and instanter."

But, as fate would have it, she had scarcely reached the porch of the
Old Doctor's house when Nicky-Nan himself emerged from it: and at the
sight of him her fatal curiosity triumphed.

"Mr Nanjivell!" she called.

Nicky-Nan turned about. "Good mornin', Miss. Was that you
a-callin'?"

Having yielded to her impulse, Miss Oliver suddenly found herself at
a loss how to proceed. Confusion and the call to improvise an
opening movement mantled her cheeks with that crimson tint which her
friend Mary-Martha so often alleged to be unbecoming.

"I stopped you," she answered, stammering a little, "because, with
all our little differences in Polpier, we're all one family in a
sense, are we not? We have a sort of fellow-feeling--eh?--whether in
trouble _or_ prosperity. And as a Polpier woman, born and bred, I'd
like to be one of the first to wish you joy of your good fortune."

Nicky-Nan's face did not flush. On the contrary, it turned to an
ashen grey, as he stood before her and leant for support on his
stick. He was making inarticulate sounds in his throat.

"Who told you?" he gasped hoarsely. Recollecting himself, he hastily
changed the form of the question. "What lies have they been tellin'
up about me now?"

Miss Oliver had meant to disclose the guinea in her palm, and tell
him of her meeting with the child 'Biades. But now she clutched the
coin closer, and it gave her confidence--a feeling that she held her
trump card in reserve.

"Why, of course, they have been putting up lies, as you say," she
answered cunningly. "There was never such a place as Polpier for
tittle-tattle. They've even gone so far as to set it about that it
came from Germany: which was the reason you haven't joined up with
the colours."

"_What_ came from Germany?"

"And of course it i