"Can't you make it a week?" pleaded the miller. "She may have some other engagement on for to-night, and—er—well, a week will give her time to turn around."
"Make it five days," said the Colonel. "To-day is Wednesday. Let her make the delivery on Monday morning."
"Done!" said the miller, overjoyed, and he went out.
He had not the slightest notion in the world how his beautiful daughter would be able to fulfil the agreement—indeed, he was fairly certain in his mind that she would be able to do nothing of the sort, but he had the use of five thousand dollars at a critical moment in his career and he knew that if worst came to worst he could shave off his mustache, and, thus disguised, take passage for Europe in the steerage of some one of the many Saturday steamers.
Now, on his return home that evening, the miller was very much embarrassed by a searching inquiry from his beautiful daughter. It seems that when she had tried to telephone to one of her friends that afternoon she had been informed by Central that the service had been discontinued for non-payment of the bill for December, 1906.
"Have we come to such a pass as that, father?" she demanded, her lovely voice quivering with emotion.
"It looks like it," said the miller, with an uneasy laugh. "I have been kept so busy paying for your daily supply of fresh sables that I haven't had a moment for the gas bills or for your conversational accounts. With you to look after, my dear, I find that even talk is not cheap."
The beautiful girl wiped the tears from her eyes with her point-lace handkerchief.
"But," she cried, "what are we going to do? I must have eleven hundred and seventy dollars and fifty-five cents to-morrow morning, father, or I shall be ruined."
The miller's heart sank within him and his face grew ashen.