“Yes, father; and I hope you will have a great deal of it, and I hope you will put plenty—plenty of money into the—into the——”
“Investment,” said Mr. Leeson. “The investment that sounds so promising. Don’t keep me now, love.”
“I am going out for a long walk, father; it is such a bright, sunshiny day. Good-by for the present.”
Mr. Leeson did not hear; he again bent over the letter which he was writing. Sylvia ran back to Jasper.
“He seems quite well,” she said, “and very much interested in what the post brought him this morning. I think I can leave him quite safely. You will be sure to see that he has his food.”
“Bless you, child!—yes.”
“And you will on no account betray that you live here?”
“Bless you, child! again—not I.”
“Well then, I will get into my finery. How grand and important I shall feel!”
So Sylvia was dressed in the brown costume and the pretty brown velvet hat, and she wore a little sable collar and a sable muff; and then she kissed Jasper, and telling her she would remember all the messages, started on her day of pleasure. Jasper saw her out by the back entrance. This entrance had been securely closed before Jasper’s advent, but between them the woman and the girl had managed to open the rusty gate, although Mr. Leeson was unaware that it had moved on its hinges for many a long day. It opened now to admit of Sylvia’s exit, and Jasper went slowly back to the house, meditating as she did so. Whatever her meditations were, they roused her to action. She engaged herself busily in her bedroom and kitchen. She opened her trunk and took out a small bag which contained her money. She had plenty of money, still, but it would not last always. Without Sylvia’s knowing it, she had often spent more than a pound a week on this establishment. It had been absolutely necessary for her to provide herself with warm bedclothes, and to add to the store of coals by purchasing anthracite coal, which is almost smokeless. In one way or another her hoard was diminished by twenty pounds; she had therefore only forty more. When this sum was spent she would be penniless.