“Unless the grandmother passes it off as her own, which happens more often than you might imagine. But that, I’m afraid, depends on whether she can persuade her husband to go along with the deceit. In the end it will come down to what is considered the lesser of two evils. And money, of course. Everything comes down to money in the end, around here. Shall we?”

Margaret fell into step beside him. “The woman who stole the rabbit the day we met, you remember? You said that was about money.”

“Peggy, like many in this parish, is struggling to keep the wolf from the door. She takes in laundry, and her husband sells flowers at the market. They’ve five little ones. The eldest is seven, I think—Susannah would know. The long and the short of it is, she pawned some of the laundry she’d been paid to wash, giving the cash to her husband to buy blooms, intending to redeem her bond when he sold them later that day. Sadly, her husband drank and gambled the funds away instead, so in desperation she stole the rabbit to raise the money to get the laundry out of hock and keep her job.”

“That’s simply awful! What happened?”

“I managed to smooth things over with the stall-holder. Fortunately, Peggy had the sense to use a legitimate pawnbroker, so she wasn’t in debt to one of the sharks that feed on the unfortunate and needy.”

“Susannah said you make enemies by helping people.”

“You can’t do the work I do without treading on a few toes. Moneylenders, shopkeepers who charge a small fortune for credit, landlords who won’t make repairs, governors and vestrymen who won’t spend a penny more than the bare minimum, they all like to point the finger of blame at me. But I’ve a thick skin, and not only am I sure I’m in the right of it,” Father Sebastian said with a wry smile, “I’ve God on my side.”

“And any right-minded decent person, too, I should hope.”

He laughed, shaking his head. “You’d think so, wouldn’t you, but there’s scores of so-called upstanding citizens who would be happy to see the back of me.”

“Did you have words with Peggy’s husband?”

“Heavens, no. He’d view it as meddling in his affairs and it wouldn’t be me who’d suffer the consequences.”

Margaret shuddered. “Surely she won’t end up in that dreadful place back there.”