s.'

'Took! But isn't that stealing?' Una cried.

'Hsh!' said Philadelphia, looking round at Puck. 'All I say is she took
them without my leave. I made it right afterwards. So, as Dad says--and
he's a magistrate-, it wasn't a legal offence; it was only compounding a
felony.

'It sounds awful,' said Una.

'It was. My dear, I was furious! I had had the keys for ten months, and
I'd never lost anything before. I said nothing at first, because a big
house offers so many chances of things being mislaid, and coming to hand
later. "Fetching up in the lee-scuppers," my uncle calls it. But next
week I spoke to old Cissie about it when she was doing my hair at night,
and she said I wasn't to worry my heart for trifles!'

'Isn't it like 'em?' Una burst out. 'They see you're worried over
something that really matters, and they say, "Don't worry"; as if that
did any good!'

'I quite agree with you, my dear; quite agree with you! I told Ciss the
spoons were solid silver, and worth forty shillings, so if the thief
were found, he'd be tried for his life.' 'Hanged, do you mean?'Una said.

'They ought to be; but Dad says no jury will hang a man nowadays for
a forty-shilling theft. They transport 'em into penal servitude at
the uttermost ends of the earth beyond the seas, for the term of their
natural life. I told Cissie that, and I saw her tremble in my mirror.
Then she cried, and caught hold of my knees, and I couldn't for my life
understand what it was all about,--she cried so. Can you guess, my dear,
what that poor crazy thing had done? It was midnight before I pieced it
together. She had given the spoons to Jerry Gamm, the Witchmaster on the
Green, so that he might put a charm on me! Me!'

'Put a charm on you? Why?'

'That's what I asked; and then I saw how mad poor Cissie was! You know
this stupid little cough of mine? It will disappear as soon as I go to
London. She was troubled about that, and about my being so thin, and
she told me Jerry had promised her, if she would bring him three silver
spoons, that he'd charm my cough away and make me plump--"flesh up," she
said. I couldn't help laughing; but it was a terrible night! I had to
put Cissie into my own bed, and stroke her hand till she cried herself
to sleep. What else could I have done? When she woke, and I coughed--I
suppose I can cough in my own room if I please--she said that she'd
killed me, and asked me to have her hanged at Lewes sooner than send her
to the utte