"I made him come here," replied Miss Pett. "I caught him in the wood outside there, as I was coming back from the Town Hall, so I made him come in. It'll pay very well, Chris."
Mr. Pett, who was lifting his glass to his lips, arrested it in mid-air, winked over its rim at his aunt, and smiled knowingly.
"You're a good hand at business, I must say, old lady!" he remarked admiringly. "Of course, of course, if you're doing a bit of business out of it——"
"That'll come tomorrow," said Miss Pett, seating herself at the table and glancing at her nephew's bag. "We'll do our own business tonight. Well, how have you come on?"
Christopher munched and drank for a minute or two. Then he nodded, with much satisfaction in his manner.
"Very well," he answered. "I got what I consider a very good price. Sold the whole lot to another Brixton property-owner, got paid, and have brought you the money. All of it—ain't even taken my costs, my expenses, and my commission out of it—yet."
"How much did you sell for?" asked Miss Pett.
Christopher pulled his bag to his side and took a bundle of red-taped documents from it.
"You ought to think yourself jolly lucky," he said, wagging his head admonitorily at his aunt. "I see a lot of the state of the property market, and I can assure you I did uncommonly well for you. I shouldn't have got what I did if it had been sold by auction. But the man I sold to was a bit keen, 'cause he's already got adjacent property, and he gave rather more than he would ha' done in other circumstances. I got," he continued, consulting the topmost of his papers, "I got, in round figures, three thousand four hundred—to be exact, three thousand four hundred, seventeen, five, eleven."
"Where's the money?" demanded Miss Pett.