"Oh," I cried, in the utmost alarm and terror, "you're quite wrong, you are indeed. I never touched them--I only--I--I know who did, that's all."
"Yes--he's a--" I was going to say "shoeblack," but I stopped myself in time, and said, "a little boy."
She released her grasp, greatly to my relief, and waited for me to go on.
"And I really don't think he knows any better," said I, recovering my confidence.
"Well," I said, "I know the proper thing would be to give him up to the police."
"That's what I'd do to you in a minute, if you'd stolen them," she said.
"I've rather an interest in the little boy," I said nervously, "and I thought if you wouldn't mind telling me what the boots came to, I'd ask you to let me pay for them. I don't think he'll do it again."
"Well, it's a very queer thing," said the woman; "what a popular young thief your friend must be! Why, I had a young gentleman here yesterday evening asking the very same thing of me!"
"What!" I exclaimed, "was it Jack Smith?"
"I don't know his name, but he'd a pair of black eyes that would astonish you."
"That's him, that's him!" I cried. "And he wanted to pay for the boots?"
"He did pay for them. I shall make my fortune out of that pair of boots," added she, laughing.
This, then, explained his wearing the boots that morning. How quick I had been to suspect him of far different conduct!
"You'd better keep your money for the next time he steals something," observed Mrs Trotter, rather enjoying my astonishment; "he's likely to be a costly young treat to you at this rate. I hope the next party he robs will be as lazy about her rights as me."
I dropped my uncle's half-sovereign back into my purse, with the rather sad conviction that after all I was not the only honest and righteous person in the world.
The next morning, on my arrival at Hawk Street rather before the time (I had taken to being early at the office, partly to avoid arriving there at the same time as Smith, and partly to have the company of young Larkins, of postage-stamp celebrity, in my walk from Beadle Square), I found Doubleday already there in a state of great perturbation.
"What do you think," he cried, almost before I entered the office--"what do you think they've done? I knew that young puppy's coming was no good to us! Here have I been here twelve years next Michaelmas, and he not a year, and blest if I haven't got to hand over the petty cash to my lord, because old Merrett wants the dear child to get used to a sense of responsibility in the business! Sense of rot, I call it!"