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The temptation was irresistible. Geake unlocked the skivet, plunged a hand in and banged down a fistful of notes on the table. "Here," said he; "here's five-an'-twenty pound'. You shall have it all if you'll go straight out o' this door an' back to America." Half-an-hour later, William Geake was standing by his garden-gate again. Every now and then he glanced down the road towards St.
His Bible, in which before breakfast he had been searching for a text, lay open on the side table. Behind its place on the shelf was a small skivet he had let into the wall; and in that drawer was stored something over twenty-five pounds, the third of his savings. Geake kept a bank-account, and the balance lay at interest with Messrs. Climo and Hodges, of St. Austell.
Even the women feared to sharpen their tongues openly on Laquedem, who by this time held the purse of the district, and to offend whom might mean an empty skivet on Saturday night. July, to be sure, was more tempting game; and one day her lover found her in the centre of a knot of women fringed by a dozen children with open mouths and ears. He stepped forward.
But the skivet was empty: and the day was Saturday: and every Saturday evening, as regularly as he wound up the big eight-day clock in the kitchen, Naomi and he would sit down and count over the money. True he had only to go to St. Austell and Messrs. Climo and Hodges would let him draw five new notes. The problem was: How to get to St. Austell and back before Naomi's return?
The child stood up, pulled her chair across to the table, and reseating herself, gazed steadily across at him through the tobacco-smoke. "Where d'ye keep your bonds an' such like?" she asked. "In my strong box, for the most part: two or three in the skivet of my sea-chest." "You got 'em all?" "All. That's to say all except the paper for this hundred pounds, which 'twas agreed Rogers should keep."
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