bed, and could speak of nothing else, saying she would give all the
world to sleep so well every day of her life.

"Eh," whispers her father in my ear, "you see how luxuries do tempt the
poor child, and what kind of a bed she is like to lie in if our hopes
miscarry."

On which, still holding to my scruples, I says to Moll:

"'Tis easy to say you would give the world, Moll, but I know full well
you would give nothing for all the comfort possible that was not your
own."

"Nay," says she, crossing her hands on her breast, and casting up her
eyes with the look of a saint, "what are all the fruits of the earth to
her who cannot take them with an easy conscience? Honesty is dearer to
me than the bread of life."

Then, as Jack and I are looking at each other ruefully in the face at
this dash to our knavish project, she bursts into a merry peal of
laughter, like a set of Christmas bells chiming, whereupon we, turning
about to find the cause of her merriment, she pulls another demure face,
and, slowly lifting her skirt, shows us a white napkin tied about her
waist, stuffed with a dozen delicacies she had filched from Don
Sanchez's table in coming down from her room.




CHAPTER IV.