“All the same, you dear boy, something must be troubling you to make you feel so ill-natured,” said she, pointedly.
“I should think it would!” snapped he, the patch-work quilt drawn up close about his chin so that only his face showed.
“Then do tell me if I can help in any way. My purse and heart are both wide open for you to help yourself, whenever you like.”
Jimmy was young, and had not yet realized that independence was a great privilege. But he had learned that poverty was not the virtue people called it. It meant doing without pleasant things, and constantly sacrificing what seemed most desirable. He knew Mrs. Alexander would buy her way into his good graces if she could, and he was just angry enough, and sulky at fate, to tempt him to take advantage of her offer. Even though he might regret it shortly after.
“Well, to confess—as I would to my own mother—I’m broke! And it’s no pleasant state of affairs on a long trip like this one, with a lot of pretty girls wanting to be treated to candy, and other things,” growled Jimmy.
“Poor dear boy!” sighed Mrs. Alexander, seating herself on the edge of the great antique bed, and patting his head. “Don’t I understand? Now let me be your other mother, for a while, and give you a little spending money. When it is gone, just wink at me and I will know you need more. If there were a number of young men to assume the expenses of treating the crowd of girls with you, I wouldn’t think of suggesting this. But I remember that you are but one with a galaxy of beauties who look for entertainment from you.”
Thus Mrs. Alexander cleverly managed to induce Jimmy to believe he was justified in taking her money, and as she got up to go out, she said: “I’ll leave a little roll on the dresser. If you feel able to get up and come out, you will see that you will feel better for the effort and the air.”
So saying, she left a packet under the military brushes on the dresser and, smiling reassuringly at the youth, went out. But she did not leave the closed door at once; she waited, just outside, until she heard him spring from the bed and rush over to the place where the money had been left. Then she nodded her head satisfactorily, and crept downstairs.
Jimmy counted out the notes left for him, and gasped. He hadn’t seen so much money at one time, since the war began! And he felt a sense of gratitude, then repulsion, to the ingratiating person who thus paid him for his good-will.
Mr. Fabian and his party were examining the old cathedral, with its two Norman towers and the western front rich with carvings, without a thought of the two they had left at the Inn. Having completed the visit to the edifice, they all returned to see the old inn known as “Moll’s Coffee-house.”