“You see the old gent didn’t always get up to breakfast with the kids and one morning when I brought in the cakes Emmy looked up and grinned. I nearly dropped the plate. He had both sets of the old man’s false teeth in his mouth. I got ’em back in his room without his waking, but I’d have liked a picture of Emmy.”
“Pythagoras,” I demanded, when we had recovered from this recital, “why 249 didn’t you tell him who you were, and how you all came to be here with us?”
“Because she is our mudder, and we are going to stay with her, always. We’ve got a snap. So has father and mother. And Ptolemy told us that if you ever got any kids, you’d get five thousand each for them, and I thought we’d just make that much for you. So we played Uncle Iz for it. Easy money, all right, all right.”
“Talk about fine financiering,” quoth Rob. “‘Them Three’ will surely land on Wall Street.”
But poor Silvia had no heart for humor and was weeping silently.
“Why, look here, my dear,” I said in consolation, “this is a very simple matter to adjust. In the morning when you feel better, just write a full explanation of the affair and inclose your check for twenty-five thousand.”
Silvia quickly wiped away her tears.
“I’ll do it tonight, Lucien. I feel better now. I never thought of writing.”
Huldah and “Them Three” looked most lugubrious.