"Rob, you're a scamp," gasped Mrs. Grey—all that she had breath to say—as she kissed Rob's glowing cheek, and yielded.
"Wait a minute, Wythie; don't go out there, Prue. Let Mardy see the luck first alone, and then we'll all go, and make a time of it," cried Rob, getting between the other girls and the door.
"What is it all about, Rob?" cried Wythie. "Is there really coal there?" added Prue.
"The equivalent of much coal. Patergrey wrote an article—by request, mind you—for a magazine, and they have sent him a check for a hundred dollars," cried Rob. "I guess there are people outside of Fayre with brains enough to appreciate our father!"
"Oh, how beautiful!" cried Oswyth, while Prue caught her breath in delight. Then, as Mrs. Grey's voice reached them in a happy laugh, the three made a stampede to join her outside.
"Did you ever know anything so splendumphant?" cried Rob, once more catching her mother around the waist in one of her mad onslaughts.
"I'm so glad, Mardy! You've looked so troubled," said Oswyth, kissing her mother with a tenderness so maternal that it almost seemed as though their relation was reversed.
Prue beamed on them all impartially. "I think it is quite awful that money can make people so happy and unhappy," she remarked.
"That is an opinion held by all philosophers—all other philosophers, Prudence," observed her father.