Page 84 - An Australian Lassie

all in him; stirred as it had stirred towards no one living since his daughter had left him more than seventeen
years ago.

He put out one hand and touched her hair (she could not know, no one could know, of course)--his only
daughter's little child!

And Betty slept on. Had she but known it, a bent-shouldered old gentleman, who might have exerted a
wonderful influence over her whole life, was at that moment looking at her with softened eyes. But great
possibilities are frequently blighted by small importunities.

The greengrocer chose this moment to open the front door and look into the hall, and the captain saw him,
started, and lost his feeling of kinship for the sleeper.

"Good evenin'," said the greengrocer blandly, "T found her about an hour ago, an' came straight 'ome with
her."

Captain Carew explained briefly that his boy had been returned to him about an hour ago, and that the
promised reward had been given on his behalf to the policeman.

The man looked crestfallen.

"My wife told me," he said, "when T come back from the markets. She said somebody had lost a boy, and you
had lost a girl. And your reward was the biggest, so T went for the girl."

Captain Carew put his hand in his pocket, and shook his head. To pay for Betty seemed to him to be publicly
claiming her. Yet he could not help being glad that she was found.

"And she ain't nothin' to you?" said the man, most evidently disappointed.

"Nothing!" said Captain Carew firmly; "but T hear that she ran away with my boy--to make her fortune. She
lives, T believe, in a small weather-board cottage a few yards further on."

He felt much stronger after he had spoken that sentence. Of course she was nothing to him. He walked to his
library, and then looked over his shoulder, and saw the man just stooping over the little girl again. And then,
for no reason at all, of course, he put his hand into his pocket again, drew out a sovereign and gave it to the
man.

"To make up for your mistake," he said.

Then he went away and shut the library door, while the two went away.

"Little baggage!" he said, "she's nothing to me. John's the only grandchild T ever want."

But he had an uncomfortable feeling that he had owned her.

An hour later, on his way through the hall to his bedroom; he found a soiled crumpled piece of paper on the
cane lounge, and opening it, read--"Please give me a penny, sir!"

"The little vagabond!" he muttered. But he put the paper into his pocket.