Circular script lettering sketch

Mr Pryce came up Chapel Row this morning with his cap in his hands, asking after the Dunn boy who went off with your tin of wages the week before the strike meeting. I told him Dunn had gone to Sheffield and never sent a penny back. That was a lie, but a tidy one, and it kept Pryce on the step long enough for the kettle to boil.

You'll want to know why I did it. Dunn sat in our kitchen the night the roof came down at number three, and he wept into Mam's good teapot like a child. He had your coins sewn into the lining of his waistcoat and said he'd been meaning to give them back. I believed him. I let him sleep by the range. He was gone before the lamps were lit, and so was the tin.

Then on Thursday Pryce's own purse went missing from the lamp room, and the tin turned up under the chapel bench with Dunn's initials scratched on the lid. Nobody said a word. Pryce just looked along the pew until he found my face, and held it there through the whole of the second hymn.

So I'm writing from the back step with the tin in my lap. Mam used to say what goes round comes round, and I always thought she meant it as a warning for other people. I've put the tin on the dresser where Pryce can see it when he comes for his answer. Your loving sister, Nell.