Mary Jane gave her own room to Uncle Harvey. Her dresses still hung along the wall there, behind a long curtain, but the king said to leave them. I got a little room up under the roof.
After the big supper I ate in the kitchen with Joanna, and she began to ask me about England. Sometimes I felt I was on very thin ice.
“Did you ever see the king?” she asked.
“King William the Fourth? Of course. He goes to our church.” I knew he had died years ago, but I didn’t say so.
“I thought he lived in London. And you live in Sheffield.”
I was stuck. I pretended to choke on a chicken bone, to get time to think. “I mean he comes to our church when he’s in Sheffield. Only in the summer.”
“And where do you sit in church?”
“With your Uncle Harvey.”
“With him? I thought he’d be up in front, preaching.”
I had forgotten he was a preacher. I choked on another chicken bone. “Do you think a church has only one preacher? They have seventeen. Only one preaches each Sunday. The rest are just there to look important. Don’t you know anything?”
“I don’t want to know such foolishness. Now, honestly, haven’t you been telling me a lot of lies?”
“Not a single one.”
“Put your hand on this book and say it.”
I saw it was only a dictionary, so I put my hand on it and said it. “Well,” she said, “I’ll believe some of it, but I won’t believe the rest.”
Just then Mary Jane came in, with Susan behind her. “It isn’t kind to talk to him like that, Joanna. He’s a stranger here, far from his people. You mustn’t say things that make a person feel ashamed.”
I said to myself: and this is a girl I’m letting that old snake rob!
Then Susan went at Joanna too, and then Mary Jane again, sweet and kind, until there was almost nothing left of poor Joanna. So she asked me to forgive her, and she did it so beautifully that I wished I could tell her a thousand lies, so she could do it again. Then all three of them tried to make me feel at home among friends. I felt so low and mean that I made up my mind: I would get that money back for them.
Alone, I thought it over. Should I tell the doctor? No: he might say who told him. Should I tell Mary Jane? No: her face would show it, and they would run off with the money. I had to steal the money myself, without them suspecting me, and later, from far down the river, write to Mary Jane and tell her where it was.
I went to the king’s room in the dark and felt around, but I couldn’t do anything without a candle. Then I heard footsteps coming. I couldn’t find the bed to hide under, but I touched the curtain in front of Mary Jane’s dresses, jumped behind it and stood very still.
The king and the duke came in and shut the door, and the first thing the duke did was look under the bed. I was glad I hadn’t found it.
“That doctor worries me,” said the duke. “I think we should leave before three in the morning, with what we’ve got.”
That made me feel bad. An hour ago it would have been different.
“What!” said the king. “And leave eight or nine thousand dollars’ worth of property lying around? We’ll sell it all first.”
The duke said the gold was enough; he didn’t want to rob a lot of orphans of everything they had.
“We won’t rob them of anything but this money,” said the king. “When it comes out that the property wasn’t ours, the sale won’t count, and it all goes back to the girls. The buyers are the ones who lose.” He talked until the duke gave in.
As they were leaving, the duke said, “I don’t think we’ve put the money in a good place. Soon a slave will be told to pack these dresses away, and a slave who finds money will take some of it.”
“You’re right again, duke,” said the king, and he felt behind the curtain two or three feet from me. I stood flat against the wall and shook. But he found the bag without noticing me. They pushed it deep into the straw mattress under the feather bed and said it was safe there, because nobody turned that mattress more than twice a year.
But I knew better. I had it out of there before they were halfway down the stairs.