"I thought there was something afoot," said Bill, "when Silas asked for a job with me. I was glad to give him one. He can be useful to me in a hundred ways. He's a corker—"
"They could build a little house at the back of the garden. Father would be so pleased—" I said, eagerly. "Sarah wouldn't leave me, you know—"
I stopped.
Bill, with his hat in his hands, turned.
"It will be difficult to arrange that," he said, "as you have made other plans. And I shall leave Green Hill—so I am afraid," he concluded evenly, "that a 'little house in the garden'—unless you wish to keep Silas on—wouldn't be quite feasible."
He went out with that, and it was some time before I had pulled myself together and gone in to tell Sarah the news. I saw her later, flying in a most indecorous manner toward the garage, and knew that she and Silas would presently be sitting on the step of the car building air-castles in Green Hill with their new fortune. Well I knew that one of them would be reared in the back of my little garden, just as I thoughtless enough, had one. It wouldn't be fair to hurt Sarah now, I told myself. I would wait till we were home. Sarah would be sorry—she liked Bill—but Father would keep both Sarah and Silas on—the place needed a permanent man-of-all-work....
But there were breakers ahead—bitter waters. I was to be spared nothing—nothing—to the final humiliation.
There was a letter from Father when the mail came in. It isn't necessary to set it down here. Suffice it to say that something I had said in my last letter about his never-failing generosity to me, had called forth a denial that "the bit of pin-money—to make you feel independent, dear!" amounted to anything. And then a word about the income Bill had settled on me: "I think you should know, Mavis," he concluded, "although I am breaking word with Bill. He told me he didn't want your small, unworldly head to be bothered with money matters. But it is time that you learned to be practical—"
He mentioned the little allowance he had insisted on making me: it would hardly have paid for my shoes. And eventually it was clear to me that the money in the bank ... my clothes ... my lovingly purchased gifts for my friends ... Sarah's wages ... my many extravagances since coming to Cuba ... everything, everything had come from the one source ... Bill. And I, more ignorant than any child about the value of money, had not even asked, except once. And then he had lied to me, had told me it was my money, my Father's money, and all the time I had been living on charity. How well he knew me, that he took the chance that I would not ask Father for a definite statement of what allowance he was making me!
I was overwhelmed with shame and dismay. It seemed as if this were the proverbial last straw. "They make gold out of straws, don't they?" my sick brain inquired childishly. It was hard to think coherently.