SINFUL WASTE OF A PENNY STAMP
Ten minutes passed. Hughie, leaning heavily against the frame of the French window, gazed listlessly out at a squirrel which was inviting him to a game of hide-and-seek from the far side of a tree-trunk.
"One thing," he mused,—"I shall be able to go abroad again now. No more of this—"
There was the faintest perceptible rustle behind him. Joan must have come in very quietly, for the door was shut and she was sitting on the corner of the writing-table,—exactly where the recently-departed Haliburton had been posing,—swinging her feet and surveying her late guardian's back. In her hand she held a pink slip of paper.
Hughie never forgot the picture that she presented at that moment. She was dressed in white—something workmanlike and unencumbering—with a silver filigree belt around her waist. She wore a battered Panama hat—the sort of headgear affected by "coons" of the music-hall persuasion—with a wisp of pale blue silk twisted round it. The evening sun, streaming through the most westerly of the windows, glinted on her hair, her belt, and the silver buckles on her shoes. Hughie caught his breath.
Joan spoke first.
"Here's something for you, Hughie," she said.
Hughie took the proffered slip of paper. It was a cheque, made out to himself and signed by Jimmy Marrable.
"I think that covers all the expense to which you have been put on my account while Uncle Jimmy has been away," said Joan. Her voice sounded gruff and businesslike.
Hughie examined the cheque. "Yes," he said, "it does."