'If you've quite done a-browbeating of the innocent children,' said
Martha, 'I'll hire a private carriage and we'll drive home to their
papa's mansion. You'll hear about this again, young man! - I told
you they hadn't got any gold, when you were pretending to see it in
their poor helpless hands. It's early in the day for a constable
on duty not to be able to trust his own eyes. As to the other one,
the less said the better; he keeps the Saracen's Head, and he knows
best what his liquor's like.'

'Take them away, for goodness' sake,' said the inspector crossly.
But as they left the police-station he said, 'Now then!' to the
policeman and Mr Pease- marsh, and he said it twenty times as
crossly as he had spoken to Martha.


Martha was as good as her word. She took them home in a very grand
carriage, because the carrier's cart was gone, and, though she had
stood by them so nobly with the police, she was so angry with them
as soon as they were alone for 'trapseing into Rochester by
themselves', that none of them dared to mention the old man with
the pony-cart from the village who was waiting for them in
Rochester. And so, after one day of boundless wealth, the children
found themselves sent to bed in deep disgrace, and only enriched by
two pairs of cotton gloves, dirty inside because of the state of
the hands they had been put on to cover, an imitation
crocodile-skin purse, and twelve penny buns long since digested.

The thing that troubled them most was the fear that the old
gentleman's guinea might have disappeared at sunset with all the
rest, so they went down to the village next day to apologize for