“You dare to lay a hand on me,” said Delia; and there was that in her livid face and blazing eyes that caused the move Bob had made to rise in his chair to subside again. “Besides, you couldn’t take it from me without tearing it to pieces, nor could you cash it without my endorsement—which you would never get. How’s that, Lawyer Bob?”
“Damnable tommy-rot. Oh, hang it, Clytie, can’t you knock some sense into her silly noddle? You haven’t said anything.”
“How can one when you’re all bellowing at once? Well, I may as well tell you both that you’ve made a thundering silly mess of the whole thing. My beautiful scheme, which was becoming simpler and simpler every day, is now irrevocably knocked on the head—”
“Beautiful scheme! Tommy-rot!” interrupted Bob. “A cool thou, in the hand’s worth twenty ‘beautiful schemes’ in your head.”
”—But as you have knocked it out,” went on Clytie, ignoring the interruption, “I say stick to the thousand.”
“Hear, hear!” cried Bob.
“My mind is quite made up,” replied Delia. “I am going to return it. Why, we could never hold up our heads in the place again.”
“We don’t hold them extra tall as it is,” laughed Clytie, “yet we manage to rub along somehow. A cool thou, doesn’t tumble our way every day, wherefore don’t be in a hurry about the thing, Delia; give it, say, till to-morrow. Think it well over.”
“It won’t bear thinking about, much less thinking over. I am going to Hilversea as fast as my bicycle will carry me; now, immediately.”
Then her father and brother began upon her again. Ingratitude for what they had done for her, callous indifference to her father’s declining old age and increasing wants, general selfishness—these were but few of the crimes laid to her charge. But she was adamant.