It was about twelve meridian when he lifted the latch and entered.  Hannah was in bed; but she turned her hungry eyes anxiously on him—­as she eagerly inquired: 

“Did you bring the tea, Ishmael?”

“No, Aunt Hannah; Mr. Nutt wouldn’t trust me,” replied the boy sadly, sinking down in a chair; for he was very weak from insufficient food, and the long walk had exhausted him.

Hannah began to complain piteously.  Do not blame her, reader.  You would fret, too, if you were sick in bed, and longing for a cup of tea, without having the means of procuring it.

To divert her thoughts Ishmael went and showed the pocketbook, and told her the history of his finding it.

Hannah seized it with the greedy grasp with which the starving catch at money.  She opened it, and counted the gold and silver.

“Where did you say you found it, Ishmael?”

“I told you a mile out of the village.”

“Only that little way!  Why didn’t you go back and buy my tea?” she inquired, with an injured look.

“Oh, aunt! the money wasn’t mine, you know!” said Iahmael.

“Well, I don’t say it was.  But you might have borrowed a dollar from it, and the owner would have never minded, for I dare say he’d be willing to give two dollars as a reward for finding the pocketbook.  You might have bought my tea if you had eared for me!  But nobody cares for me now!  No one ever did but Reuben—­poor fellow!”

“Indeed, Aunt Hannah, I do care for you a great deal!  I love you dearly; and I did want to take some of the money and buy your tea.”

“Why didn’t you do it, then?”

“Oh, Aunt Hannah, the Lord has commanded, ‘Thou shalt not steal.’”

“It wouldn’t have been stealing; it would have been borrowing.”

“But I know Patrick Henry and John Hancock wouldn’t have borrowed what didn’t belong to them!”

“Plague take Patrick Hancock and John Henry, I say!  I believe they are turning your head!  What have them dead and buried old people to do with folks that are alive and starving?”

“Oh, Aunt Hannah! scold me as much as you please, but don’t speak so of the great men!” said Ishmael, to whom all this was sheer blasphemy and nothing less.

“Great fiddlesticks’ ends!  No tea yesterday, and no tea for breakfast this morning, and no tea for supper to-night!  And I laying helpless with the rheumatism, and feeling as faint as if I should sink and die; and my head aching ready to burst!  And I would give anything in the world for a cup of tea, because I know it would do me so much good, and I can’t get it!  And you have money in your pocket and won’t buy it for me!  No, not if I die for the want of it!  You, that I have been a mother to!  That’s the way you pay me, is it, for all my care?”

“Oh, Aunt Hannah, dear, I do love you, and I would do anything in the world for you; but, indeed, I am sure Patrick Henry—­”