“I am hoping to get the money together this week,” he replied. “If I get it, I shall be well off in a year, rich in five years.”
“There is just a doubt about your getting it, then?” she inquired.
“Just a doubt,” he admitted. “I have a solicitor who is doing his best to raise a loan, but I have not heard from him for two days. Then I have also a friend who has promised it to me, a friend upon whom I am not quite sure if I can rely.”
They turned into the Strand.
“Tell me about my father, Leonard,” she begged.
He hesitated; it was hard to know exactly how to speak of the professor.
“Perhaps if you have talked with him at all,” she went on, “it will help you to understand one of the difficulties I had to face in life.”
“He is, I should imagine, a little weak,” Tavernake suggested, hesitatingly.
“Very,” she answered. “My mother left him in my charge, but I cannot keep him.”
“Your sister—” he began.