Suddenly through the open door there came a cry of "Miss Rosamund, I want you!"
Rosamund got up reluctantly. "Nanna's a regular tyrant!"
"Leave all this to me," he said. "I'll find the prescription if it's here."
She went off, and almost at once he came to a folded bit of paper. Perhaps this was the prescription? He opened it, and this is what he read:—
March 12, 1919. This is the happiest day of my life. One of my godmothers has died and left me £50. I am going to buy two nanny-goats, a boy and a girl. They will have kids, and I shall make munny. We shall then have a propper cook, and I shall never help Betty wash up any more. I wish my other godmother would die. She is very genrus and kind—she would go strait to Heaven. But she is very hellfy.
Poor little Timmy! Dear little unscrupulous child of nature! Would Timmy wish him, Godfrey Radmore, dead, if some accident were to reveal to him what a great difference it would make to them all? He hoped not. But he couldn't feel sure, for, from being well-to-do the Tosswills must have become poor, painfully and, to his mind, unnaturally poor.
Further search proved the prescription was not in the play-box, and he went downstairs. Still that same unnatural silence through the house. Where could Timmy be? Somehow he felt that he wanted to see Timmy and find out about the nanny-goats. He feared his godson's expectations of wealth had not been fulfilled, but he supposed that there was a "propper cook," probably the lack of her had been quite temporary.
He wandered into the drawing-room. In the old days all five sitting-rooms had been in use. Now four of them were closed, and the drawing-room was everybody's meeting place. Dolly was there working a carpet-sweeper languidly.
"Where's everybody?" he asked.
"I think Betty and Timmy are still in the scullery. I don't know where Rosamund is."