"Don't you know, at all, how the money has gone?" asked Molly.
"No! not at all. That's the sting. There are tailors' bills,
and bills for book-binding and wine and pictures--those come
to four or five hundred; and though this expenditure is
extraordinary--inexplicable to such simple folk as we are--yet it
may be only the luxury of the present day. But the money for which
he will give no account,--of which, indeed, we only heard through
the Squire's London agents, who found out that certain disreputable
attorneys were making inquiries as to the entail of the estate;--oh!
Molly, worse than all--I don't know how to bring myself to tell
you--as to the age and health of the Squire, his dear father"--(she
began to sob almost hysterically; yet she would go on talking, in
spite of Molly's efforts to stop her)--"who held him in his arms, and
blessed him, even before I had kissed him; and thought always so much
of him as his heir and first-born darling. How he has loved him! How
I have loved him! I sometimes have thought of late that we've almost
done that good Roger injustice."
"No! I'm sure you've not: only look at the way he loves you. Why, you
are his first thought: he may not speak about it, but any one may see
it. And dear, dear Mrs. Hamley," said Molly, determined to say out
all that was in her mind now that she had once got the word, "don't
you think that it would be better not to misjudge Mr. Osborne Hamley?
We don't know what he has done with the money: he is so good (is he
not?) that he may have wanted it to relieve some poor person--some
tradesman, for instance, pressed by creditors--some--"
"You forget, dear," said Mrs. Hamley, smiling a little at the girl's
impetuous romance, but sighing the next instant, "that all the other
bills come from tradesmen, who complain piteously of being kept out
of their money."
Molly was nonplussed for the moment; but then she said,--
"I daresay they imposed upon him. I'm sure I've heard stories of
young men being made regular victims of by the shopkeepers in great
towns."
"You're a great darling, child," said Mrs. Hamley, comforted by
Molly's strong partisanship, unreasonable and ignorant though it was.
"And, besides," continued Molly, "some one must be acting wrongly in
Osborne's--Mr. Osborne Hamley's, I mean--I can't help saying Osborne
sometimes, but, indeed, I always think of him as Mr. Osborne--"
"Never mind, Molly, what you call him; only go on talking. It
seems to do me good to hear the hopeful side taken. The Squire has
been so hurt and displeased: strange-looking men coming into the
neighbourhood, too, questioning the tenants, and grumbling about the
last fall of timber, as if they were calculating on the Squire's
death."