“Well, I must have the cash, even if I have to steal it,” he answered, with an attempt at lightness that he plainly did not feel. “I promise I won’t do it again; so hand over the oof, there’s a good soul, and let us be quit of the miserable business.”
“You really mean what you say—that you will not gamble again?” asked Dorothy a little doubtfully, for his manner was too casual to inspire confidence.
“Of course I mean it. Didn’t I say so? What more do you want?” His tone was irritable, and his words came out in jerks. “Do you want me to go down on my knees, or to swear with my hand on the Bible, or any other thing of the sort?”
“Don’t be a goat, Tommy lad,” she said softly, and then she slipped two half-crowns into his hand, and hoped that she had done right, yet feeling all the time a miserable insecurity in her heart about his keeping his promise to her.
He made an excuse to slip away soon after he had got the money, and Dorothy turned back into the drawing-room in search of diversion. She quickly had it, too—only it was not the sort she wanted.
Bobby Felmore was prowling round the almost empty room, studying the portraits of the founders of the Compton Schools, as if he were keenly interested in art; but he wheeled abruptly at sight of her, and came towards her with eager steps.
“I’ve been nosing round to find you. Where have you been hiding?” he said, beaming on her. “Come along and have another dance before chucking-out time. I thought I should have had a fit to see that young bantam chick, Wilkins Minor, toting you round.”
“I said I did not intend dancing with you again, and I meant it,” she said coldly.
“You said ‘unless,’ but you did not explain what that meant.” He thought he had caught her, and stood smiling in a rather superior fashion.
Dorothy coloured right up to the roots of her hair. The thing she had to say was not easy, but because she was in dead earnest she screwed up her courage to go through with it, and said in calm tones, “The ‘unless’ I spoke about was, if you had seen fit to pay back what you have had from the boys for that sweepstake you got up.”