The young man bowed his head. The colour came into his face also. ‘How she must have watched him, and how rightly she had read his thoughts!’ was what he was saying to himself.
Mr. Erin took no notice of either of them; his mind had reverted to the new-found treasure.
‘Look at it, Dennis,’ he cried. ‘The seals and paper are quite as they should be. I have no doubt of its being a genuine deed of the time. Then the signature—there are only two others in all the world, but I do think—just take this microscope (his own hand trembled so that he could scarcely hold it)—there can be no mistake about it. It is without the “a,” but it can be proved that he spelt it indifferently; and again, the receipt _has_ the “a,” an inconsistency which, in the case of a forgery, would certainly not have been overlooked. There can be no doubt of its being a genuine signature, can there?’
‘That is a matter on which you are infinitely better qualified to judge than I am, Mr. Erin,’ was the cautious rejoinder. ‘Perhaps you had better consult the autograph in Johnson and Steevens’s edition.’
‘Tush! Do you suppose that I have not every stroke and turn of it in my mind’s eye? Reach down the book, Maggie.’
Margaret, who knew where to lay her hand upon every book in her uncle’s library, made haste to produce the volume.
‘There, did not I tell you?’ said Mr. Erin triumphantly. ‘Look at the _W_, look at the _S_.’
Dennis did look at them very carefully. ‘Yes,’ he admitted, ‘there is no doubt that they are fac-similes.’
‘Fac-similes!’ exclaimed the old man angrily; ‘why not frankly say that they are by the same hand at once?’
‘But that is begging the whole question,’ argued Dennis, his honest and implastic nature leading him into the selfsame error into which he had fallen at Charlecote Park. ‘It is surely more likely upon the whole that an autograph purporting to be Shakespeare’s should be a fac-simile than an original.’
‘Or, in other words,’ answered Mr. Erin, with a burst of indignation, ‘it is more likely that this lad here, poor William Henry’ (the ‘poor’ sounded almost like ‘poor dear’), ‘should have imposed upon us than not.’
‘Oh no, oh no,’ interposed Margaret earnestly; ‘I am sure that Mr. Dennis never meant to suggest that.’