“Oi never knowed he was there, did, Oi’d a-tarned that key,” said her grandfather, guffawing afresh.
“And everybody would have thought me in Australia, and then after long years a skeleton would have been found,” said Will, with grim humour.
Jinny clapped her hands. “Just like Mr. Flippance’s play, The Mistletoe Bough!”
She had closed the house-door. A timid tapping at it, which had gone unobserved, now grew audible.
“There’s your dad!” said Jinny.
Will’s eyes widened. “My dad?” he breathed incredulously.
“Git in the box!” whispered the Gaffer, almost bursting with glee. “Git in the box!” His sinewy arms seized the young man round the waist.
Will struggled indignantly. “I nearly choked!” he spluttered.
“Sh!” Jinny with her warning finger and dancing eyes stilled him. “Just for fun—only for a moment!”
Her instinct divined that to let the old man have his way would be the surest method of clinching the reconciliation. He could then never go back on her later, never resent the trick played upon him. It would become his trick, his farce, it would provide a fund of happy memories for the rest of his life. And as she cried “Come in!” and the latch lifted and Caleb’s white-rimmed, cherubic countenance was poked meekly through a gap, while her grandfather, stroking his beard, composed his face to an exaggerated severity, Jinny felt that life was almost too delicious for laughter.