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“Aye, aye,” said Mr. Freely, smiling, with every capability of murder in his mind, except the courage to commit it. He wished the Bath buns might by chance have arsenic in them.

“Mother’s zinnies?” said Jacob, pointing to a glass jar of yellow lozenges that stood in the window.”Zive ’em me.”

David dared not do otherwise than reach down the glass jar and give Jacob a handful. He received them in his smock-frock, which he held out for more.

“They’ll keep him quiet a bit, at any rate,” thought David, and emptied the jar. Jacob grinned and mowed with delight.

“You’re very good to this stranger, Mr. Freely,” said Letitia; and then spitefully, as David joined the party at the parlour-door, “I think you could hardly treat him better, if he was really your brother.”

“I’ve always thought it a duty to be good to idiots,” said Mr. Freely, striving after the most moral view of the subject.”We might have been idiots ourselves–e
verybody might have been born idiots, instead of having their right senses.”

“I don’t know where there’d ha’ been victual for us all then,” observed Mrs. Palfrey, regarding the matter in a housewifely light.

“But let us sit down again and finish our tea,” said Mr. Freely.”Let us leave the poor creature to himself.”

They walked into the parlour again; but Jacob, not apparently appreciating the kindness of leaving him to himself, immediately followed his brother, and seated himself, pitchfork grounded, at the table.

“Well,” said Miss Letitia, rising, “I don’t know whether YOU mean to stay, mother; but I shall go home.”

“Oh, me too,” said Penny, frightened to death at Jacob, who had begun to nod and grin at her.

“Well, I think we HAD better be going, Mr. Palfrey,” said the mother, rising more slowly.

Mr. Freely, whose complexion had become decidedly yellower during the last half-hour, did not resist this proposition. He hoped they should meet again “under happier circumstances.”

“It’s my belief the man is his brother,” said Letitia, when they were all on their way home.

“Nonsense!” said Mr. Palfrey.”Freely’s got no brother–he’s said so many and many a time; he’s an orphan; he’s got nothing but uncles–leastwise, one. What’s it matter what an idiot says? What call had Freely to tell lies?”

Letitia tossed her head and was silent.

Mr. Freely, left alone with his affectionate brother Jacob, brooded over the possibility of luring him out of the town early the next morning, and getting him conveyed to Gilsbrook without further betrayals. But the thing was difficult. He saw clearly that if he took Jacob himself, his absence, conjoined with the disappearance of the stranger, would either cause the conviction that he was really a relative, or would oblige him to the dangerous course of inventing a story to account for his disappearance, and his own absence at the same time. David groaned. There come occasions when falsehood is felt to be inconvenient. It would, perhaps, have been a longer- headed device, if he had never told any of those clever fibs about his uncles, grand and otherwise; for the Palfreys were simple people, and shared the popular prejudice against lying. Even if he could get Jacob away this time, what security was there that he would not come again, having once found the way? O guineas! O lozenges! what enviable people those were who had never robbed their mothers, and had never told fibs! David spent a sleepless night, while Jacob was snoring close by. Was this the upshot of travelling to the Indies, and acquiring experience combined with anecdote?

He rose at break of day, as he had once before done when he was in fear of Jacob, and took all gentle means to rouse this fatal brother from his deep sleep; he dared not be loud, because his apprentice was in the house, and would report everything. But Jacob was not to be roused. He fought out with his fist at the unknown cause of disturbance, turned over, and snored again. He must be left to wake as he would. David, with a cold perspiration on his brow, confessed to himself that Jacob could not be got away that day.