This tale, delivered without emphasis, was more terrible to Jennie than all the pangs of conscience. Had she but been true to the promises made to Mrs. Collingham, she could have said, "Father dear, you'll never have to worry any more." Two hours earlier, twenty-five thousand dollars had been within her grasp, and she had let it go. "All that money," she sighed to herself, "and love!"
But since it would be within her grasp to-morrow, a new thought came to her. The hundred dollars she would ultimately return to Bob need not be in exactly the same bills. There was no reason why she should not use this amount and restore it from the wealth to come. Bob couldn't possibly tell the difference between the paper that made up one sum of a hundred dollars and the paper that made up another. She would have preferred to hand it back without touching it, but, in view of the family need, fastidiousness was out of place.
As they emerged into Palisade Walk and the vast panorama lay below them, she slipped her arm through his.
"Daddy," she said, caressingly, "what should you say if you saw me with a hundred dollars?"
To Josiah, it was the kind of question children ask when their imaginations go off on flights. It would have been the same thing had she said a thousand or a million. Nevertheless, he replied, more gravely than she had expected:
"What should I say, my dear? I should say you couldn't have come by it honestly."
"Oh, but if I could?"
"It's no use talking about that, my dear, because I know you couldn't. If you had a hundred dollars, some man would have given it to you, and no man would give it to you unless—"
He didn't finish the sentence, because she hurried on ahead. He reached her only when she stood still, looking down on the river, to spring the question prepared on second thoughts.
"But, daddy, if I had a hundred dollars, you'd use it for the taxes—wouldn't you?—even if I hadn't got it honestly."