“If I want to get some of it—and I do want—how do I set about it?”
“The money is invested in my name, Alice, as your trustee. It was so put when you were a child, and has never been altered, because I was able to sign for your dividends without troubling you. If you want any of it out, you give me authority, I write to a broker, and give him authority, and he manages it.”
“Will you please to write, uncle, and tell him to sell out ten thousand pounds? Don’t look angry, uncle, please don’t.”
“Well, Alice, I will do as you desire me; but mind, Frank won’t take it.”
“Oh, uncle, don’t say that,” Alice cried; indeed she had worried so much over the difficulty of persuading her uncle to consent to her wishes that she had never thought of the probability or otherwise of Frank’s accepting it.
“Well, do you think it likely yourself, Alice?”
“But he mustn’t know it comes from me, uncle.”
“Well, my dear, have your own way; I will carry out your wishes as you desire; but, mark my words, Frank won’t take it. Frank may have done a blackguard dishonourable action once, but we can’t have been altogether mistaken in him. We cast him off when he was well off, he will not receive assistance from us now.”
“No, he would not for himself, uncle, but he has others to think of now.”
“Very well, my dear,” Captain Bradshaw said, coldly; “try.”