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THERE COULD BE NO DOUBTTHAT THIS WAS THE MISSING LETTER.
"I will go with you if you like," she said. "Could you go in the dinner hour to-morrow, if I met you at the corner of the London Road?"
"Yes, you could, Hester," said Alice, who rather envied her cousin the honour of walking into a big shop like Brading's with Miss Molly. "You could do it fine, Hester," urged Alice. "The mill is close to the London Road, and you could be at Brading's corner by five minutes after twelve."
"You meet me there at five minutes past twelve and I will take care nobody hurts you. And when you leave the mill in the afternoon, you shall come here to tea with Alice, and I will give you some nice hot cakes that Alice shall bake ready for you."
Tea with Alice, and hot cakes, was too tempting to be resisted, and Hester nodded her acceptance of the invitation, and then said: "I'll be at Brading's, and you take care of them papers, and bring 'em to-morrow when you come."
Molly breathed a sigh of relief that she would not have to part with the precious documents as she said, "Very well, I will take care of them, and I feel sure the people at Brading's will give you something for taking them back."
"Yes, perhaps they will if you go with me, but I shouldn't have much of a show there if I went by myself."
Molly laughed. "I think you would find it all right," she said; "I am sure it will be, in fact."
And then she bade the girl good-night and went off with her prize to find Arthur and tell him what she had discovered.
But when she reached the dining-room, she found that Mr. Andrews had just come in.
Arthur had been out, and, meeting the old gentleman not far from the gate, had brought him in to see his mother.
The lawyer congratulated her upon her restoration to health and being able to join the family circle once more.
And Mrs. Murray, who had always carefully avoided meeting Mr. Andrews, was quite suave and pleasant in her greeting, for she had begun to understand the condition of affairs now, and was willing to fall in with the arrangements by which Arthur's inheritance would become a valuable property.
"You will have to be careful and thrifty for a year or two to come," said Mr. Andrews, "for although I have managed to pull the chestnut out of the fire for you, still there will be no ready money for you yet. You see, I have had to sell one or two parcels of land fairly cheap to get a little ready money, for cash down was what I needed. Then I have had to borrow on other securities, and the bank has lent me some, so that I have been able to pay Lady Mary the last penny we owed her this morning, and all the debts and securities are safe in my hands once more."
The old man spoke as triumphantly as though he had just won back the crown jewels, and he looked as fondly at Arthur as though he was the young king who would wear them. "I should never have taken all the trouble I have, if I had not found out that you were a lad with a little grit and common sense, and would not be likely to let things drift down to the dogs again."
"Thank you, Mr. Andrews!" said Mrs. Murray. "You have been a friend indeed to all of us, and I am sure the least we can do is to be guided by your advice for the future. Arthur is young yet, and I am afraid I have not had much experience of the ways of the world, so that we need a disinterested friend like you at our back."
"Well, well, we shall see, as time goes on and things unfold, what we had better do. For the present, Arthur cannot do better than stay where he is. Afterwards, perhaps it would be best for him to be articled to an architect and land-surveyor, that he may learn to make the best of the land when it comes into his possession. It will take some time and money to make it as profitable as I believe it can be made, and so, for the present, you must all be content to live here as economically as you can."
It was not very pleasant advice for the old man to give or for the lady to receive, for Mrs. Murray, who had lived in luxury all her life, had begun to hope that they might leave the cottage and move to a larger house very soon, and Mr. Andrews' words had rudely dashed all her hopes at once. But she was beginning to learn the lesson of life, that the gratification of a momentary whim or pleasure might be purchased at the cost of future peace and comfort, and so she again promised to be guided by the lawyer's advice.
When he rose to leave, he went away feeling sure that his labour had not been in vain this time.
When Mr. Andrews had gone, Molly managed to drag her brother aside.
"Guess what I have got here," she whispered, touching her pocket.
Arthur made one or two guesses, but Molly was too impatient to tell her wonderful news to let him make many attempts. "I have got the missing letter," she whispered, "and it has a post office order in it. That was what Adrian meant when we met him and he said, 'If he had the cheque you had the letter,' which, of course, had more money in it than he had taken."
"Yes, we heard the other day that there was a post office order in the letter, or, at least, that he had bought one when he changed the cheque. It came out when I was arrested, but, as Mamma was only to be told that I had been arrested and released again, we did not think it worth while to tell you all the particulars."
"Naughty boy!" said Molly, shaking her finger at him. "Didn't we agree a little while ago that we would tell each other everything?" she added in a mock offended tone.
"Well, if I don't tell you, you manage to find out," answered Arthur. "But now, tell me how you have discovered what has puzzled us all so long. Where did you find the missing letter?"
"In our kitchen," answered Molly laughing.
And after her brother had puzzled over this reply for a minute or two, she said: "We gave Alice leave to have her cousin here this evening, and when I went out there to see they were not in mischief, Alice asked my advice for her cousin. She works at some paper-mill. It seems they have a great deal of waste-paper which they use up for something. And they employ girls to sort it, and this girl found a letter that had not been opened. But the post office order seems to have puzzled her, and she was so afraid that her fellow-workpeople might cheat her, that she brought it up to Alice to ask her advice, and Alice asked me."
"And what do you propose to do about it, Miss Moll? It is evidently a woman's question, or a girl's question, now."
"Yes, it is, and I am going to manage it my own way, and so you need not have anything to do with it unless you like."
"Thank you!" said Arthur mockingly.
"I am to meet this girl, Hester Piper, to-morrow about twelve o'clock near Brading's stores, and then I am going in with her, but she is to carry the letter, and when I have found Mr. Langley, she is to give him the letter and tell him where she found it."
"Capital!" said Arthur. "I could not do it much better myself."
"Well, now, I hope Mr. Langley won't be mean to the poor girl. I hope he will give her something for bringing it back; I have told her he would be sure to do this, so I hope he won't disappoint her."
"All right, Molly! I am sure they would not mind giving up all the money for the sake of having the affair satisfactorily cleared up. And I am glad, for Adrian's sake, that it has been found, not that it will make much difference to him now, for Fairmead has made up its mind that he is a bad lot, and I am glad he is not coming back to hear what people are saying about him. I had a letter from him this morning telling me about his life at the crammer's. He is very comfortable, he says, and is delighted at the idea of being a soldier. I shall write and tell him the letter was found at the paper-mill, and I know he will be glad, for he would not have been a bad fellow if Lady Mary had only known how to manage him."
The brother and sister agreed to keep the secret to themselves for the present and see what happened on the morrow.
True to her promise, Molly found Hester waiting at the corner the next day, dressed in a cotton overall and a shawl over her head, which was the costume most of the mill-girls patronized for working purposes. And having delivered the dirty but precious missive to her charge, Molly took her hand and the two girls walked into the handsome shop and asked to be directed to the tailoring department by a waiting messenger near the door.
They looked a strange pair of customers for the tailoring department as the messenger escorted them through the long shop. When Mr. Brading caught sight of them, he hurried on to be near at hand when they arrived at Mr. Langley's department, for Arthur had not kept the secret from either Mr. Brading or Mr. Bristow, and both were anxious to see whether the little mill-girl would turn up, and Mr. Brading was very glad when he saw them.
"This is Mr. Langley," said the messenger when he had convoyed the girls to the tailor's shop, and immediately Hester placed her grimy-looking missive on the counter and said, "Please, sir, is that letter for you?"
The manager took it up and looked at it before opening it, and then exclaimed rather sharply, "Where did you get this from?"
"It was in the waste at the mill. I work at Robinson's, and that was in the waste-paper which I have to sort," explained Hester.
And then Molly told him that Hester had brought it to their servant for advice as to what should be done with it.
"And you are Miss Molly Murray, I think," said another gentleman who had just joined Mr. Langley. "You see, you were not altogether unexpected," he said, smiling. Then, turning to Hester, he said, "Now, if I give you a sovereign for this piece of paper," holding up the post office order, "do you think that will do?"
"Oh yes, sir! And Miss Molly is going to give me my tea and hot cakes," said Hester, quite overcome at her good fortune, as Mr. Brading gave her the sovereign out of his own purse.
And then he wished Molly good-morning, and the two girls left the shop.
"How could it have got to the mill?" exclaimed Mr. Langley after they were gone.
"From the waste-paper basket," said Mr. Brading. "I don't think the letter ever came downstairs. Murray told us this morning that it had been found, and then remembered that one morning after the letters had been sorted, they came to fetch the waste-paper basket instead of getting it early as it should have been. There was an unusually heavy mail too that day, so that it must have slipped off the table without being noticed."
"Well, I am thankful it is found; it quite clears Mr. Murray's character," observed the manager.
"Yes, it does; not that it was necessary so far as I am concerned," said Mr. Brading. "The lad has earned a character since he has been here for straightforward honesty and truthfulness in word and deed. But still it is satisfactory to be able to prove it to all the world, for this is an inheritance that none can take from him, and, by the proof he has given of possessing these qualities, I am glad to know that he has regained his inheritance which his ancestors had well-nigh squandered in idle extravagance."
THE END.