“Pro, you ought to have been a parson, with a beautiful long black coat, a white fence round your neck, and a shovel hat. Then I could have come and ‘sat under’ you—that is what they call it, I think—and made slippers and smoking-caps for you.”
“The truth cannot be sold, my dear, or dispensed day by day like butcher’s meat. They who hawk salvation for pay are bartering their own souls. But let that pass. Now you are free, what are you going to do for Police-Constable Hobbs? I hear he is to be promoted to sergeant.”
“I will give him five hundred pounds to buy a house of his own. Do you think that will do?”
“I thought you would do no less, my dear. Mr. Hobbs, when he hears it, will be the happiest man in the police force.”
* * * * *
Twelve months later Bertha startled the Professor by a resolution she seemed suddenly to have arrived at.
“I have been thinking, Pro.”
“What about, my dear? A new bonnet?”
“Now don’t be a quiz! It’s not in your line, as the theatrical people say. You are more suited for the ‘heavy’ business. I have decided to go to Paris. You know how I love to get you to talk about that place. And now I mean to see it for myself. I have heaps of money, which, as you will not help me to spend it, I must try and do myself.”
“And are you going alone?”