LITERATURE.

Globe, Volume III, Issue 276, 30 April 1875, Page 3

LITERATURE.

THE OTHER EAR-RING. From the Argosy. Concluded. ‘ Search the room, you fool,’ cried the excited Mr Edwards. ‘ I’d never trust the word of a woman. No offence to your wife, Bird,'Amt they are not to be trusted.’ ‘ Rubbish !’ said Captain Bird. ‘ Either she or you must have got it. It could not dissappear without hands. The people down below have not been to our rooms, as you must know. ‘ She or I—what do you mean by that ? ’ retorted Captain Bird ; and a short sharp quarrel ensued. That the Captain had not touched the ear-ring, Edwards knew full well. It was Edwards who had helped him to reach the bed the previous night; and since then he had been in the deep sleep of stupor. But Edwards did think the Captain’s wife had. The result was that Captain Bird re-entered ; and, ordering Lucy to lie still, he made as exact a search of the room as his semi-sobered faculties allowed. Lucy watched it from her bed. Amid the

general hunting and turning-over of drawers and places, she saw him pick up her gown and petticoats one by one and shake them thoroughly; but he found no signs of the ear-ring. From that time to this the affair had remained a mystery. There had been no one in the house that night, save the proprietor and his wife, two quiet old people who never concerned themselves with their lodgers. They protested that the street door had been fast, and that no midnight marauder could have broken in and slipped upstairs to steal a pearl brooch (as Edward put it) or any other article. So, failing the feasibility of other outlets of suspicion, Edwards continued to suspect Lucy. There were moments when Bird did also : though he trusted her, in regard to it on the whole. At any rate Lucy was obliged to be most cautious. The quilted skirt had never been off her since, except at night; though the warm genial days of spring and the sultry heat of summer she had worn the clumsy wadded thing continually ; and the ear-ring had never been disturbed until this afternoon. ‘You see how it is Johnny,’she said to me, with one of her sobbing sighs. But at that same moment the grocer’s young man in the white apron came down the walk, swinging his empty basket by the handle, and he took another good stare at us in passing. ‘ I mean, as to the peril I should be in if you suffer the restoration of the ear ring to transpire,’ she continued in a whisper, when he was a safe distance. ‘ Oh, Johnny Ludlow, do you and Mrs Todhetley take care for my poor sake !’ * Lucy, you need not doubt either of us,’ I said earnestly. ‘We will be, as you phrased it to-day, true as steel —and as cautious. Are you going back ? Let me walk up to the top with you. ’ ‘No, no ;we part here. The seeing us together might arouse some suspicion, and there is no absolute certainty that they may not come out, though I don’t think they will. Edward is for ever thinking of that ear-ring; he does not feel safe about it. you perceive. Go yon that way; I go this. Farewell, Johnny Ludlow, farewell.’ ‘ Good night, Lucy. lam off to the circus now. She went with a brisk step up the walk. I ran out by St Oswald’s, and so on to the Saracen’s head. The place was crammed. I could not get near Tod and Harry Parker ; but they whistled at me across the sawdust and the fancy steeds performing on it. * * * * * * We sat together in her bedroom at Dyke Manor, the door bolted against intruders. Mrs Todhetley, in her astonishment at the tale I told, hardly daring to touch the earring. |lt was Saturday morning; we had come home from Worcester the previous evening ; and should now be off to school in an hour. Tod had gone strolling out with the Squire; which gave me my opportunity. ‘ You see, good mother, how it all is, and the risk we run. Do you know, I had half a mind to keep the ear-ring myself for some mouths and say never a word to you; only I was not sure of pitching on a safe hidingplace. It would be so, dreadful a thing for Lucy Bird if it were to get known. ’

‘ Poor Lucy, poor Lucy ! ’ she said, the tears on her light eyelashes. ‘ Oh, Johnny, if she could but be induced to leave that man ! ’

e But she can’t, you know. Robert Ashton has tried over and over to get her back to the Court —and tried in vain. See how it shines! ’

I was holding the car-ring so that the rays of the sun fell upon it, Hashing and sparkling. It seemed more beautiful than it used to be.

‘ I am very glad to have it back, Johnny; the other one was useless without it. You have not,’ with a tone of apprehension in her voice, ‘told Joseph?’ I shook my head. The truth was, I had never longed to tell anything so much in my life; for what did I ever conceal from him ? It was hard work, I can assure you. The ear-ring burning a hole in my pocket, and I not able to show Tod that it was there !

* And now, mother, where will you put

it?’ She rose to unlock a drawer, took from it a small blue box in the shape of a trunk, and unlocked that.

*lt is in this that I keep all my little valuables, Johnny. It will be quite safe here. By-and-by we must invent some mode of ‘ recovering the ear-ring,’ as poor Lucy said. ’

Lifting the lid of a little paste-board box, she showed me the fellow ear-ring lying in a nest of cotton. I took it out.

* Put them both into your ears for a minute, good mother ! Do.’ She smiled, hesitated ; then took out the plain rings that were in her ears, and put in the beautiful topaz and diamond ones. Going to the glass to look at herself, she saw the Squire and Tod advancing in the distance. It sent us into a panic. Scuffling the earrings out of her ears, she laid them together on the wool in the card-board box, put the lid on, and folded it round with white paper. ‘Light one of the caudles on my dressing table, Johnny. We will seal it up for greater security : there’s a bit of red sealing wax in the tray.’ And I did so at her direction: stamping it with the seal that had been my fathers, and which with his watch they had only recently allowed me to take into wearing. ‘ There,’ she said, 4 should anybody by chance see that packet, though it is not likely, and be curious as to know what it contains, I shall say that I cannot satisfy them, as it concerns Johnny Ludlow. 4 Are you upstairs, Johnny ? What in the world are you doing there. I went leaping down at Tod’s call. All was safe now. That’s how the other car-ring came back. And Eccles had to be let off scot free. But I was glad he got the ducking. Johnny Ludlow.