'Children,' said the father at last entreatingly, 'come and help me; I have lost a very important envelope.'
For over an hour did that family search from one end of the house to the other. It was Lizzie's happy thought that discovered it.
'A long blue envelope, with no stamp on it and just printing instead—why, there was one like that in the kitchen drawer with the dinners on it,' she said.
She rushed for it, and met her anxious master with it held triumphantly out.
The back of the envelope bore dinners for the week in Hermie's round careful hand.
Mon.—Roast fowl, mashed potatoes, collyflower, pink jellie and gem cakes.
Tues.—Tong, blommange and strawberry jam, rainbow cake.
Wed.—Sardenes, current buns, yelow jelly and merangs.
Mr. Cameron thrust a trembling hand into the depths of it, and, to his exquisite relief, was able to draw out the cheque for his quarterly sixty pounds.
In danger of the kitchen fire, in danger of the dust-box, in danger of Roly's passion for paper-tearing, in danger of all the wind-storms that had sprung up and torn raging through the place, in danger of all these for three months, and still safe!
The relief took the man back into the dining-room, responsibility for his family to the front for the third time in his life.
He ran through the bills with a sinking heart. Instead of twelve pounds a month that Miss Macintosh's carefulness had made suffice, little Hermie had brought up the totals to twenty-eight—eighty-four pounds for the quarter, to be deducted from the sixty pounds that must also pay rent and clothes and many other things.