“He didn’t go so far as to say that Government Officials were compelled to attend:  though he implied that it was expected of him.  There’s an unwritten law in most of these matters. . . .  But after what I’ve told you, Charity Oliver, do you look me in the face and suggest that the Derby horse-race—­being run, as every one knows, early in the London season and somewhere towards the end of May, if my memory serves me—­can be made to account for a man like Nanjivell, that humanly speaking shouldn’t know one end of a horse from another, starting to parade his wealth in the month of August?”

“You’ve such a knack of taking me up before I’m down, Mary-Martha!  I never said nor implied that Mr Nanjivell had won his money on a horse-race.  I only said that some people did.”

“Oh, well, if that’s your piece of news,” said Mrs Polsue with her finest satirical air, “it was considerate of you to put on your bonnet and lose no time in telling me. . . .  But how long is it since we started ’Mister’-ing Nanjivell in this way?”

Miss Oliver’s face grew crimson.  “It seems to me that now he has come into money—­and being always of good family, as everybody knows—­” She hesitated and came to a halt.  Her friend’s eyes were fixed on her, and with an expression not unlike a lazy cat’s.

“Oho!” thought Mrs Polsue to herself, and for just a moment her frame shook with a dry inward spasm; but not a muscle of her face twitched.  Aloud she said:  “Well, in your place I shouldn’t be so hot, at short notice, to stand up for a man who on your own showing is a corrupter of children’s minds.  Knowing what I’ve told you of the relations between this Nanjivell and Mrs Penhaligon, and catching this Penhaligon child with a gold coin in his hand, and hearing from his own confession that the man gave it to him, even you might have drawn some conclusion, I’d have thought.”

“I declare, Mary-Martha, I wouldn’t think so uncharitably of folks as you do, not if I was paid for it.  You’re annoyed—­that’s what you are—­because you got Mr—­because you got Nanjivell watched for a German spy, and now I’ve proved you’re wrong and you can’t wriggle out of that!”

“Your godfather and godmothers did very well for you at your baptism, Charity Oliver.  Prophets they must have been. . . .  But just you take a chair and compose yourself and listen to me.  A minute ago you complained that I took you up before you were down.  Well, I’ll improve on that by taking you down before you’re up—­or up so far as you think yourself.  Answer me.  This is a piece of gold, eh?”

“Why, of course.  That’s why I brought it to you.”

“What kind of a piece of gold?”

“A guinea-piece.  My father used to wear one on his watch-chain, and I recognised the likeness at once.”

“Quite so.  Now when your father happened to earn a sovereign, did he go and hang it on his watch-chain?”