Based on a memory of his own of something Junia had said—"a mousey little thing with a veneer of modesty, but mercenary isn't the word for her"—there was an implication in this "Only?" which escaped Jennie's simplicity.
"Yes, sir; that was all. Somehow I couldn't get the work. Nobody seemed to want me."
He pointed at her roll of bills.
"Then where did you get the money you're holding in your hand?"
The question was unexpected and confounding. She must either answer it truly or not answer it at all. If she answered it truly, she not only exposed Bob, but she exposed herself to the utmost rigor of his wrath. She didn't care about herself; she didn't care much about Bob; she cared only about Teddy. The utmost rigor of this man's wrath would send him to jail as easily as she could brush a fly through an open window. She could say nothing. She could only look at him helplessly, with lips parted, eyes shimmering, and the hot color flooding her face pitiably.
It was the kind of situation in which no man with the heart of a man could be hard on any little girl; besides which, Collingham looked on this silent confession as providential. It would enable him to reason with Bob, if it ever came to that, and tell him what he, the father, knew at first hand and from his own experience. Otherwise he brought no moral judgment to bear on poor Jennie, and condemned her not at all.
"Just wait a minute," he said, in a kindly tone, getting up as he spoke. "I'll go and straighten the thing out."
Left alone, Jennie had these concluding words to strengthen her. He would straighten the thing out. That meant probably that Teddy wouldn't have to go to jail, and beyond this relief she didn't look. It would be everything. Nothing else would matter. He might be dismissed from the bank; they might starve; but the great thing would be accomplished.
It was a half hour or more before he returned, and when he did he looked worried. "Troubled" would perhaps be a better word, since even Jennie could see that his thoughts were farther away and deeper down than the incidents on the surface. He spoke almost absent-mindedly.
"I find there's been a leakage for some little time past, and they've had difficulty in fixing where the trouble was. Now I'm sorry to say it looks as if it was your brother. There's hardly any doubt about that—"