Many castles did they build in the air that evening, but they were not extravagant, their highest present ambition being to have the whole cottage, which was but eight-roomed, to themselves, and to keep two maids instead of one. And this, if Harry’s salary rose to a hundred and fifty, they thought they might manage. Of course it was a dreary life for him after what he had been accustomed to, but he made the best of it, and really interested himself in Egyptian trade, till he became a connoisseur in gum. His principal recreation was shooting at the Wimbledon butts on Saturday afternoons, he having joined a volunteer corps for that purpose. He had done so at Harton, and was the best shot there. He now had to compete with the best in the world, but he had a marvellous eye, and up to three hundred yards could hold his own with anybody. At any rate he won enough in prizes to pay all his expenses, and a little over.
Even when their resources looked lowest, he never thought of selling the sapphires his mysterious uncle had given him. He did not look upon them as his own till the ten years were up, or to be used for any purpose but that of going to find him. They, together with the silver case containing the parchment and the ring, were locked up in his old-fashioned, brass-bound desk which he kept in his bedroom. Nobody, not even Trix, knew anything about them.
That was the one secret the brother and sister did not share. Beatrice was disrespectful to her Mohammedan relative, and always called him Uncle Renegade till Harry read Byron’s “Siege of Corinth” aloud one evening. After that she called him Uncle Alp.
But Harry Forsyth was destined to go to Egypt without needing his uncle. He became more and more trusted by the firm which employed him, and at last it was determined to send him out to the house at Cairo on important business. His absence was a desolation for Mrs Forsyth and Beatrice; but it meant money for one thing, and, what was far more important in the mother’s estimation, it was a change for Harry from the gloomy monotony of a London office. As for the future she was under no concern. She knew of Richard Burke’s will, and that her children at all events would be comfortably provided for by it, though she herself might not outlive her elder brother.
Harry, as he was actually going to the country to which his uncle had prophesied he would, took to wearing his ring, and carried the silver case in an inner waistcoat pocket. The sapphires he left in his desk.
Chapter Four.
“Ways that are Dark and Tricks that are Vain.”
While the Forsyth family was passing through its time of trial there had been other chops and changes going on in the lives of those with whom their fortunes were more or less connected. Mr Richard Burke had still further declined in health, and could not be expected to last long; but what was unexpected by those who knew them both was that he outlived his legal adviser, Mr Burrows, who was attacked with pleurisy, which carried him off soon after he had made Mr Richard Burke’s last will.