“Well, upon my word, Kid, where'd you get this? If that isn't a joke! I wonder if Opal's seen it. Miss Severn, come here! See what a joke! I'm kidnapped! Did you ever hear the like? Look at the flowery sentences. It's almost like reading one's own obituary, isn't it?”
Marilyn, glancing over his shoulder at the headlines, took in the import of it instantly. “I should think you'd want to telephone your mother at once. How she must have suffered!” she said.
Laurie somewhat sobered agreed that it would be a good idea:
“The mater's a good old scout,” he said lightly, “She's always helping me out of scrapes, but this is one too many to give up her emeralds, the Shafton Emeralds! Gosh but dad will be mad about them! And Oh, say, call that boy back will you? I want to give him a dollar!”
But Billy had faded down the road with mortal indignation in his breast. To think of giving up a ten thousand dollar reward and having a dollar flung at you! It seemed to measure the very depth of the shame to which he had descended.
The Severns came a few paces out of their indifference to this self-imposed guest and gathered around the sheet of newspaper while Laurie held an intensive conversation with his family beginning with several servants who were too excited at first to identify his voice.
But at last he hung up the receiver and turned toward them:
“Well, I guess there's nothing for it but for me to pull out. The mater doesn't think she'll be satisfied till she has her hands on me. Besides I've got to get things started about those jewels. Dad and mother are too excited to know what they're about. I declare, it's like being dead and seeing how they feel about it.”
There was a boyish eager look about the young man's face that made him for the first time seem rather loveable, Mrs. Severn thought. The mother in her rose to appreciation. Lynn was so glad that he was going away that she was almost friendly during lunch. And when the young man was about to depart he went to Mr. Severn's study and wrote a check for five hundred dollars:
“Just in appreciation of your kindness,” he said as he held it out to the minister.