'Say no more, miss,' said the photographer (for such he indeed was) nobly. 'Your will is my law; I won't never breathe a word.'
And he sat down to the ham and eggs as though it was weeks since he had tasted bacon.
But we found out afterwards he went straight up to the Ship, and told everybody all about it. I wonder whether all photographers are dishonourable and ungrateful. Oswald hopes they are not, but he cannot feel at all sure.
Lots of people chaffed us about it afterwards, but the pigman said we were jolly straight young Britons, and it is something to be called that by a man you really respect. It doesn't matter so much what the other people say--the people you don't really care about.
When we told our Indian uncle about it he said, 'Nonsense! you ought never to try and shield a criminal.' But that was not at all the way we felt about it at the time when the criminal was there (or we thought he was), all wet, and hunted, and miserable, with people 'out after him.' He meant his friends who were expecting him, but we thought he meant police. It is very hard sometimes to know exactly what is right. If what _feels_ right _isn't_ right, how are you to know, I wonder.
The only comforting thing about it all is that we heard next day that the soldiers had got away from the brown bicycle beast after all. I suppose it came home to them suddenly that they _were_ two to one, and they shoved him into a ditch and got away. They were never caught; I am very glad. And I suppose _that's_ wrong too--so many things are. But I _am_.
It was Mrs. Beale who put it into our heads that Miss Sandal lived plain because she was poor. We knew she thought high, because that is what you jolly well have to do if you are a vegetationist and an all-wooler, and those sort of things.
And we tried to get money for her, like we had once tried to do for ourselves. And we succeeded by means that have been told alone in another place in getting two golden pounds.
Then, of course, we began to wonder what we had better do with the two pounds now we had got them.
'Put them in the savings-bank,' Dora said.
'Why, when we could have them to look at?'
Noël thought we ought to buy her something beautiful to adorn Miss Sandal's bare dwelling.