Finally Gladys raised her head. “Father, on my sixteenth birthday, you settled five thousand dollars on me in my own name!” She spoke in a low voice. “If you do not feel that you ought to pay back to Aunt Mollie the money you borrowed from Uncle John, won’t you please let me give her this money of mine? I must do it, father. I can’t understand the business side of it, but it just seems to me we owe her the money and that’s all there is to it! I have been horrid and haughty many times, but I can’t bear that we should seem—dishonest!”
Poor Gladys whispered this last dreadful word under her breath. Then she put her arms round her father and kissed him. “You are not angry with me?” she asked him.
If there was one person in the world Ralph Le Baron truly loved it was his only child, Gladys. Not for ten times five thousand dollars would he have had her a witness to the scene which had just passed between him and his sister. He meant, of course, to tell her and his wife what had happened, but he meant to put his own interpretation on the affair before they heard of it from anyone else.
Did his better nature move him? Perhaps it did. He looked around the room and answered testily: “The law certainly does not require that I return this money to my sister, and business is business with me. But since my daughter Gladys and my sister seem to look upon the matter as a case of sentiment, why I——” He spoke slowly. It was hard work for him to get the words out. “I will waive strictly business principles on this occasion, and return the money to my sister.”
“O Ralph!” cried Mrs. Thurston, as though a great load was lifted from her mind. Barbara rejoiced. But in her heart of hearts she thought it was hard to have her uncle act as though he were doing them a favor when he was only paying them their just dues.
A few minutes later Gladys and her father withdrew from the room. “I am so glad,” whispered Gladys to Bab, as she passed her cousin on her way out.
Barbara held her hand just long enough to murmur gently: “Gladys, dear, if I once did you a kindness, I think you have repaid me a thousand-fold.”
It was after ten o’clock when “Mr. A. Bubble” bore the travelers home to Laurel Cottage. Mollie and Ruth were waiting in the sitting room, with a fire burning cheerily in the grate and the candles lit over the mantelpiece. In front of the fire, they had mounted twelve marshmallows, which they were toasting to a beautiful brown on twelve hatpins.
“We thought you were never coming back, Mummy,” said Mollie, taking off her mother’s light wrap. “What has happened to you?” she asked as she viewed her mother’s shining eyes.
“Good news indeed, Mollie baby!” her mother answered. “We are five thousand dollars richer than we were when we left home. Now, perhaps Bab can go to Vassar, and things will be a little easier for us, even if the other money has gone. Mr. Stuart thinks we ought to have twenty-five dollars a month income from the five thousand dollars! Isn’t it too wonderful?”