Inspector Cameron laughed and nudged Dick slyly.
“Would you care to hear a paragraph or two from the letter that I received?”
“Yes, sir. That is, if you’d care to read it, sir.”
“I do wish to read it. Here it is.” Cameron picked up a typewritten sheet on the desk in front of him. “Now prepare yourself for a shock.”
“Regarding your request,” read the commandant, “that Recruits Kent and Toma should be retained at your detachment for special police service, I wish to say that although such an arrangement is not usual and often not advisable, we have decided to make a concession to you in this particular case.”
“Great Scott!” exclaimed Dick.
“So you see it was my fault that you didn’t go to Regina. You boys are too valuable to lose.”
Dick’s face beamed like the sun. He felt that some great force underneath him had lifted him up and that now he was being whirled around and around the room in a rose-tinted cloud. He couldn’t speak because he was so happy.
“Don’t stand there looking like a ninny. Compose yourself, my boy. Here’s your first month’s salary check. Here’s another one for Toma. Came direct from the paymaster at Ottawa. I haven’t one for Sandy because he didn’t put in his application. You tell him he’d better—if he wants to work for me. And while you’re telling him that, you might slip this bit of paper into his pocket with my compliments. Drawn from my own personal account.”
Dick recalled afterward that he had thanked the inspector, but he never could quite remember how he had gotten out of the room. He often wondered if he hadn’t floated out in triumph and in regal state on that rose-tinted cloud.