“Bit jaded perhaps. That’s his own internal workings I expect. But he’s where he ought to be, Chrissie. I feel that. What we’ve got to do, from what Mr. Punter says, is to let well alone. There he is with everything he wants, living on the ratepayers’ money. We’ve got ourselves to consider. We’ve got to think of that crazy preference-share idea he’s saddled the laundry with. That’s urgent. It’s a charge of nearly five hundred a year as things are, nearly ten pound a week. There isn’t a laundry in London could stand it.”
“I shall have to see my Daddy,” said Christina Alberta. “I don’t believe he is so comfortable. I’ve heard horrid stories of asylums. Anyhow, I ought to go right away and see him.”
“Can’t do that, Chrissie,” said Mr. Widgery, shaking his large grey face slowly from side to side and watching her as he spoke. “They don’t have visitors running in and out of these mad-houses just whenever they want to. Wouldn’t do, you know. The poor creatures have to be kept quiet and not excited. I daresay I could give you a letter for next visiting day——”
“You! Give me a letter!”
Mr. Widgery shrugged his shoulders. “It would help you to get in. But you won’t make anything of him, Chrissie, even if you see him. And you’ll have to wait for a visiting day. You must do that.”
“I want to see him.”
“Very likely. But regulations are regulations. Meanwhile there’s all this business muddle we got to put straight. While he’s in that asylum I think what I ought to do is to give you ’n allowance, five pounds a week say, and keep back the rest until we’re able to get something settled up. Or four. Or perhaps as you want it—not a definite sum. I don’t know. I haven’t thought it out yet. You can’t possibly want to do with all that ten pounds a week with him off your hands. Then we’ll be able to see where we stand and everything will be all right again.”
He paused and scratched his cheek and watched her with his little sidelong eyes. “See?” he said as if to stimulate her to speech.
Christina Alberta looked at him in a silence that became painful. Then she stood up and regarded him—her arms akimbo and her face alight.
“I see now,” she said. “You damned old Rascal!”