“But what will father say on Saturday?”
“You’ll have to own up. I could give you the sovereign, of course, and you could put it back into his purse, but that wouldn’t teach you a lesson. We fellows at school—we boys, wouldn’t do a thing of that sort, and it wouldn’t be straight for me to shield you, and let you put the money back without telling him anything about it. But I’ll help you to tell father. Now, you can go straight off to bed. I’ll help you, old girl, when you are telling him. Good-night, good-night.”
“You are a brick! You are a dear,” said Pen. She crushed her face against his cheek; he felt her tears and rubbed them away shamefacedly afterwards.
For some time he sat on in the little summerhouse in which Angela St. Just had sat when a child, and which had not yet been destroyed for a more elegant and modern edifice. When he went back to the house it was to ponder over many things. Jim was the most thoughtful of the family; he had grit in him, which was more than any of the other Carters, their father excepted, possessed.
Chapter Seventeen.
Relief Intercepted.
It is an old proverb that man proposes and God disposes. Certainly when Jim Carter went to bed that night he had not the most remote idea of not helping his little sister through her difficulties. But a very unexpected and strange thing happened. His father went up to him in the early hours of the morning and told him that young as he was he was about to send him on a very delicate mission, which no one else could execute so skilfully.
“You know, Jim,” he said, “you are older than your years, and you are to leave school next term and enter my business. My clerk, Hanson, who ought to have attended to this business, has absconded, taking some money with him, and I have no one who can fill his place. I want you, my lad, to go over to Paris for me, and to deliver this letter in person to the firm, the address of which you will find on the back. You can talk French nearly as well as a native; you have never been there before, but I want you to catch the very earliest train, the one that leaves Newcastle at half-past six in the morning. You will then be in time to catch the mail to Paris. When you have done my commission, you may go to one of the hotels and amuse yourself for two or three days. You must stay there until I get my answer. I want the thing done privately. It is a very important piece of business, and I cannot attend to it myself, for I am so busy in Newcastle just now that I cannot possibly be spared. But you will do it, Jim, and if you manage it well I won’t forget you, my lad. Here is forty pounds. You won’t spend anything like that in Paris, but you may as well have the money in your pocket as not. You can go first-class, if you please; show yourself a gentleman, and act with discretion. You won’t be questioned with regard to anything, and no one is to know where you are. Now then, up you get, and off you go. Here is my Gladstone bag; I’ll pack your things and see you to the station.”