the stairs. She entered the anti-chamber, where no person happened to be. She knocked at the inner door; but the child was crying most lustily, and prevented her knocks from being heard. The old beggar, although she had just come from the church where Mr. Seeheim had been preaching a sermon against mendicity and theft, had not profited by his exhortations. The first she was already committing, and the sight of the pie induced her to commit the other. She seized the masterpiece of pastry with the gilt S upon it, and made the best of her way down stairs. Just as she reached the bottom, she heard some one enter the passage; and thinking the best way of avoiding detection would be to turn back again, she mounted the staircase rapidly, and, passing the tailor’s door, went still further up stairs. The person whom she had heard followed her, and she saw it was Mr. Seeheim, who was all the while congratulating himself on the effect which he thought his sermon would have in diminishing the practices of beggary and theft.
The old woman felt herself already in the hands of the police, when she found that she could not get higher than the second floor, and that Mr. Seeheim was behind her. A sudden thought occurred to her, which, as it promised her safety, she did not hesitate to put in practice. Making up a demure face, she told the preacher that she had been sent with the pie as a present to him and his wife, and begged his acceptance of it with as many compliments as she could invent off hand.
‘But who is it that has sent it, my good woman?’ said the parson, perfectly dazzled by the sight of so handsome a present.
The old woman had her cue here, and said she had been expressly forbidden to tell. Mr. Seeheim believed her; and, seeing the gilded S on the pie, convinced him that it had been made for him, and nobody else. He gave the woman something for bringing the pie, and returned to her the pewter dish on which it had been sent.
