"I don't throw my money away, Frank," he said complacently. "By the way, what's the cab fare?"
"One and six," said Frank.
In the temporary absence of the senior partner, Mr. Walkingshaw handed the man half a crown, and entered the hotel humming a romantic melody.
As he crossed the hall a deferential attendant approached with a telegram.
"Hullo!" said he, "a wire. I wonder who the deuce this is from."
CHAPTER VI
It is a lamentable fact, remarked upon even by popular politicians, that the very measures which give the highest satisfaction to some people produce the profoundest depression in others. And it is worth adding that it is not always the most original reflections which have procured for their authors the widest reputation (though, if one wanted to quote an authority for this last axiom, one would perhaps turn rather to the popular theologians).
Of the truth of the first proposition, that worthy young man, Andrew Walkingshaw, was an unhappy example. It is the case that his parent's disappearance was not without compensating advantages. He was spared a number of minor annoyances, which of late had been the undeserved accompaniment of his blameless life; but then, the mystery of that disappearance, its unorthodoxy, its appalling suggestions of scandal! He knew now what it must feel like to have a relative engaged upon fashionable divorce proceedings or conspicuously notorious on the music-hall stage. For, despite his industry in circulating a circumstantial account of the business that had called the head of the firm so suddenly away, he thought he observed in the face of every acquaintance a kind of sly and knowing expression. "Aha!" every one of them seemed to say, "I've got my knife into you, Andrew!"