The old lady was propped up in bed with her open Bible on her lap and her spectacles lying in it, and as usual presented to her visitor the perfect realization of her ideal as to the looks and manners most appropriate to ailing Christians.  There was nowhere a trace of rum, and the only glass in the room was innocently filled with the china roses that flowered so profusely in the garden at Baker’s Farm.  But Mrs. Morrison could not for all that dissemble the disappointment and sternness of her heart, and the old lady glanced up at her as she came in with a kind of quavering fearfulness, like that of a little child who is afraid it may be going to be whipped, or of a conscientious dog who has lapsed unaccountably from rectitude.

“I have come to read the gospel for the day to you,” said Mrs. Morrison, sitting down firmly beside her.

“Thank you mum,” said Mrs. Jones with meekness.

“My prayer-book has such small print—­give me your Bible.”

A look of great anxiety came into Mrs. Jones’s eyes, but the Bible was drawn from between her trembling old hands, and Mrs. Morrison began to turn its pages.  She had not turned many before she came to the five-pound note.  “What is this?” she asked, in extreme surprise.

Mrs. Jones gave a little gasp, and twisted her fingers about.

“A five-pound note?” exclaimed Mrs. Morrison, holding it up.  “How did it come here?”

“It’s mine, mum,” quavered Mrs. Jones.

“Yours?  Do you mean to say you have money hidden away and yet allow Lady Shuttleworth to pay everything for you?”

“It’s the first I ever ’ad, mum,” faintly murmured the old lady, her eyes following every movement of Mrs. Morrison’s hands with a look of almost animal anxiety.

“Where did it come from?”

“The young lady give it me yesterday, mum.”

“The young lady?” Mrs. Morrison’s voice grew very loud.  “Do you mean the person staying at the Pearces’?”

Mrs. Jones gulped, and feebly nodded.

“Most improper.  Most wrong.  Most dangerous.  You cannot tell how she came by it, and I must say I’m surprised at you, Mrs. Jones.  It probably is not a real one.  It is unlikely a chit like that should be able to give so large a sum away—­” And Mrs. Morrison held up the note to the light and turned it round and round, scrutinizing it from every point of view, upside down, back to front, sideways, with one eye shut; but it refused to look like anything but a good five-pound note, and she could only repeat grimly “Most dangerous.”

The old lady watched her, a terrible anxiety in her eyes.  Her worst fears were fulfilled when the vicar’s wife folded it up and said decidedly, “For the present I shall take care of it for you.  You cannot lie here with so much money loose about the place.  Why, if it got round the village you might have some one in who’d murder you.  People have been murdered before now for less than this.  I shall speak to the vicar about it.”  And she put it in her purse, shut it with a snap, and took up the Bible again.