"Nor did I till just before I went," she answered. "Don't you want to know what the treat is?"
Without waiting for him to speak, she went on, prodding one of his waistcoat buttons gently with a little pink finger at each word.
"I bought two whopping fat peaches—one for you and one for me. They were awful expensive—seven shillings and sixpence each. And after dinner we'll eat them and make a drefful mess."
Now, I am fully aware that any and every male reader who may chance to arrive at this point will think that under similar circumstances he would argue thus: "The peaches were bought. After all, they were a little thing—fifteen shillings is not a fortune. Therefore, undoubtedly the thing to do was to take her in his arms, make much of her, and remark, 'You extravagant little bean—you'll break the firm, if you go on like this. But I love you very much, and after we've made a drefful mess I'm going to talk to you drefful seriously,' or words to that effect."
My friendly male, you're quite correct. You appreciate the value of little things; you see how vastly more important they are than a stagnating business or any stupid fears as to what may happen to the being you love most in the world if——
Unfortunately, Hugh was not so wise in his time as you. That little thing seemed to be so big—it's a way of little things. It seemed bigger than the business and the motor-car and the ottoman all combined.
"My dear old thing," he said—not angrily, but just a little wearily—"have you no sense of the value of money?"
Then he turned and went to his own room, without looking back. And so he didn't see the look on the girl's face: the look of a child that has been spoken to sharply and doesn't understand—the look of a dog that has been beaten by the master it adores. If he had seen it there was still time—but he didn't. And when he came back five minutes later, remorseful and furious with himself, the girl was not there. She was upstairs, staring a little miserably out of the bedroom window.
And that had been the beginning of it. Sitting there in the restaurant, Hugh traced everything back to that. Of course, there had been other things too. He saw them now clearly: a whole host of little stupid points which he had hardly thought of at the time. Business had not improved until—the irony of it—that very day, when a big deal had gone through successfully, and he had realized that the turning-point had come. He had hurried home to tell her, and had found—the letter.
Mechanically he lit a cigarette, and once again his thoughts went back over the last few months. That wretched evening when she gave him a heavy bill from her dressmaker, with a polite intimation at the bottom that something on account by return would oblige. He had had a particularly bad day; but she was his Colt, and there was no good being angry about it.