The light was turned on, and they began to search the hall, Helen, who had abruptly parted with the Fifth Symphony, commenting with shrill little cries.
“Don’t you talk, Meg! You stole an old gentleman’s silk top-hat. Yes, she did, Aunt Juley. It is a positive fact. She thought it was a muff. Oh, heavens! I’ve knocked the In and Out card down. Where’s Frieda? Tibby, why don’t you ever—No, I can’t remember what I was going to say. That wasn’t it, but do tell the maids to hurry tea up. What about this umbrella?” She opened it. “No, it’s all gone along the seams. It’s an appalling umbrella. It must be mine.”
But it was not.
He took it from her, murmured a few words of thanks, and then fled, with the lilting step of the clerk.
“But if you will stop—” cried Margaret. “Now, Helen, how stupid you’ve been!”
“Whatever have I done?”
“Don’t you see that you’ve frightened him away? I meant him to stop to tea. You oughtn’t to talk about stealing or holes in an umbrella. I saw his nice eyes getting so miserable. No, it’s not a bit of good now.” For Helen had darted out into the street, shouting, “Oh, do stop!”
“I dare say it is all for the best,” opined Mrs. Munt. “We know nothing about the young man, Margaret, and your drawing-room is full of very tempting little things.”
But Helen cried: “Aunt Juley, how can you! You make me more and more ashamed. I’d rather he had been a thief and taken all the apostle spoons than that I—Well, I must shut the front-door, I suppose. One more failure for Helen.”
“Yes, I think the apostle spoons could have gone as rent,” said Margaret. Seeing that her aunt did not understand, she added: “You remember ‘rent.’ It was one of father’s words—Rent to the ideal, to his own faith in human nature. You remember how he would trust strangers, and if they fooled him he would say, ‘It’s better to be fooled than to be suspicious’—that the confidence trick is the work of man, but the want-of-confidence-trick is the work of the devil.”