"Yes, I think that would be a very good plan, Mr. Pettigrew. I will ask him and his wife to come out."
"That will be the best way, my dear. We could hardly discuss the matter before Bostock."
Hilda went in. As soon as she spoke to the man and his wife Mr. Bostock said, "If you want a conference, Miss Covington, I will go out and leave you to talk matters over."
He and the two constables withdrew, and Mr. Pettigrew came in.
"Now, my man," he began, "you must see that you have placed yourself in a very awkward position. You are found taking care of a child that has been stolen, and for whose recovery large rewards have been offered all over the country. It is like the case of a man found hiding stolen goods. He would be called upon to account for their being in his possession. Now, it is hardly possible that you can have been ignorant that this child was stolen. You may not have been told so in words, but you cannot have helped having suspicions. From what the child no doubt said when he first came here, you must have been sure that he had been brought up in luxury. No doubt he spoke of rides in a carriage, of servants, his nurse, and so on. However, Miss Covington is one of the child's guardians, and I am the other, and we are most reluctant to give you in charge. It is evident, from the behavior of the child, and from the affection that he shows to yourself and your wife, that you have treated him very kindly since he has been here, and these toys I see about show that you have done your best to make him happy."
"That we have, sir," the man said. "Betsy and I took to him from the first. We have no children of our own, none living at least, and we have made as much of him as if he had been one of our own--perhaps more. We have often talked it over, and both thought that we were not doing the fair thing by him, and were, perhaps, keeping him out of his own. I did not like having anything to do with it at first, but I had had some business with the man who gave him to me, and when he asked me to undertake the job it did not seem to me so serious an affair as it has done since. I am heartily sorry that we have had any hand in it; not only because we have done the child harm, but because it seems that we are going to lose him now that we have come to care for him as if he was our own."