"That's right," he admitted, looking at her curiously, and before she started home that evening he handed her an envelope with thirty dollars in it.
She immediately made a note of the amount and dropped it in the drawer of her desk.
"Never mind entering that in your books," he said hastily, noting her action; "just keep the memorandum until we arrange for a regular dividend, then it can all be posted at once. It's—it's a matter that has been overlooked."
She thanked him for the money and took it home with her. She had been planning for a week or more upon how to get this thirty dollars. On the very next day, while he was absorbedly poring over a small account book that he kept locked carefully in his desk, he found her standing beside him.
"I'm afraid that I shall have to ask you to buy back mother's stock in the company," she said. That morning's mail had been unusually heavy in stock sale possibilities. "We have a sudden pressing need for that thousand dollars, and we'll just have to have it, that's all."
Wallingford's first impulse was to dissuade her from this idea, but another thought now came to him as he looked musingly into his roll-top desk; and as the girl, standing above him, gazed down upon his thick neck and puffy cheeks, he reminded her of nothing so much as a monstrous toad.
"Have you the stock certificate with you?" he inquired presently.
"Well, bring it down to-night," he said, "and I'll give you a check for it. I'm going away on a little trip to-morrow, and I want you to get me up a statement out of the books, anyhow."
For an instant the girl hesitated with a sharp intake of breath. Then she said, "Very well," and went home.