"Get my gun back!" exclaimed Harry. "How am I to do that?"
"Why, there's money enough," answered Kate. "You only lent your gun-money to Aunt Matilda's fund. Take out enough, and get your gun back."
"That sounds very well," said Harry; "but we haven't so much money, after all. The interest on what we have won't begin to support Aunt Matilda, and we really ought not to break in on the principal."
Kate did not immediately answer. She thought for a while and then she said:
"Well, that's what I call talking nonsense. You must have heard some one say something like that. You never got it out of your own head."
"It may not have come out of my own head," said Harry, who had not told Kate of his meeting with George Purvis, "but it is true, for all that. It seems to me that whatever we do seems all right at first, and then fizzles out. This telegraph business has done that, straight along."
"No, it hasn't," said Kate, with some warmth. "It's turned out first-rate. I think that interest idea is all stuff. As if we wanted to set up Aunt Matilda with an income that would last forever! Here comes father. I'm going to ask him about the gun."
When Mr. Loudon had had the matter laid before him, he expressed his opinion without any hesitation.
"I think, Harry," said he, "that you certainly ought to go and get your gun."
And Harry went and got it.