“Let us strike a bargain, old boy. If I accept it now, will you allow me to present it to your wife on the day you get married?”
Again Ted laughed, this time with light heart.
“I agree to that—it amounts to the same thing.”
“Do you approve of the arrangement, father?”
“Trust a woman to find some way out,” said the colonel. “I think the arrangement a good one. Honour satisfied on both sides.”
“Now, Ted, I can thank you properly—especially for your thought on first seeing the necklet. But come and see the rest of the ‘loot’, as your unprincipled and shameless brother calls it.”
“He calls it that, does he? Good judge, Jim.”
“Yes, his first daily enquiry is, ‘Any more loot to-day?’ After being satisfied on that point he condescends to enquire after me.”
“I shouldn’t have thought he was ever ‘satisfied on that point’.”
Ethel Woodburn laughed merrily.