“Good thing it didn’t,” said Clytie significantly.
“Rather!” assented Bob briskly. “All the more for us. Now we need only pay for the letter of demand. Well done, Delia. I say, dad, we ought to have a jolly good dinner to-night on the strength of it, and some fizz to drink Delia’s health.”
“So we will, so we will,” snuffled the old man. “It’s like a blessed gift of Providence coming as it does just now, for the devil only knows how we should have managed to get on much longer.”
“Buck up, old girl,” cried Bob, boisterously affectionate on the strength of this sudden accession to wealth. “Buck up. You’re looking sort of white about the gills, and pulling a face as long as a fiddle, instead of hooraying like mad. Why, you’ve got your thousand—a cool thou—and no costs charged, and no delay, and you don’t seem a bit happy.”
Then Delia spoke.
“Happy! I feel as if I could never look anybody in the face again. A mean, extortionate, blackmailing swindle has been perpetrated in my name, and I shall not lose a moment in putting it right, and explaining that I had no part in it. I am going to return this cheque.”
“Wh-at?” bellowed Bob.
“Going to re—” gasped old Calmour, who had fallen back in his chair, wide-eyed and open-mouthed.
“Is she mad?” snorted Bob, who had gone as white as the girl herself. “Gets a cool thou, sent her—a cool thou, by the Lord Harry!—and then says ‘No, thanks; I’d rather not. Take it back again.’ It oughtn’t to be allowed.”
“And would rather see her old father starve,” yelped old Calmour. “Here, take it from her, Bob. We’ll keep it for her till she comes to a better frame of mind.”