"Tea ready, lady mother? I'm hungry as a wolf. Good news gives one an appetite. Mr. White has raised my salary a couple of dollars per week. We must celebrate the event somehow this evening. What do you say to a sail on the river and an ice cream at Taylor's afterwards? When a little woman can't outlive her schoolgirl hankering for ice cream—why, Mother, what's the matter? Mother, dear!"
Mrs. Duncan had been standing before the window with her back to the room when Ernest entered. When she turned he saw that she had been crying.
"Oh, Ernest," she said brokenly, "Jacob Patterson has just been here—and he says—he says—"
"What has that old miser been saying to trouble you?" demanded Ernest angrily, taking her hands in his.
"He says he holds your father's promissory note for nine hundred dollars, overdue for several years," answered Mrs. Duncan. "Yes—and he showed me the note, Ernest."
"Father's promissory note for nine hundred!" exclaimed Ernest in bewilderment. "But Father paid that note to James Patterson five years ago, Mother—just before his accident. Didn't you tell me he did?"
"Yes, he did," said Mrs. Duncan, "but—"
"Then where is it?" interrupted Ernest. "Father would keep the receipted note, of course. We must look among his papers."
"You won't find it there, Ernest. We—we don't know where the note is. It—it was lost."
"Lost! That is unfortunate. But you say that Jacob Patterson showed you a promissory note of Father's still in existence? How can that be? It can't possibly be the note he paid. And there couldn't have been another note we knew nothing of?"