"When I wrote you, Mr. Marston, and allowed you to come here to see the invention, I considered it equivalent to a pledge not to allow anyone else to see what might become your property, and would be valueless to you if it were not protected," said Mr. Grey, quietly.
Rob waited to hear no more. She ran from the room, and caught Wythie and Kiku in a comprehensive embrace, meeting them as they came, one in the other's arms, across the hall.
"It's all right, it's all right, Oswyth, saint and martyr!" she cried, whirling Wythie around, and sending Kiku leaping, panic-stricken by her onslaught, to the top of the portière at the door. "He says he's thoroughly convinced of the value of the patent, and he asks Patergrey to keep it for him till he can consult with his partner as to the offer they mean to make for it. Oh, I knew, I knew all along it was coming right, but now it has come right, I'm ready to die of joy."
Wythie turned so white that Rob held her closer for another reason, fearing she was going to faint. "We must find Mardy," was all Wythie said, but her smile was so beatific that Rob was more than satisfied.
When Mr. Grey came back from the station, where he had been to speed his guest, he found his household waiting him, half delirious with joy.
"It's all right now, isn't it, Patergrey?" cried Rob. "There's no danger in our being as glad as we please, is there? It's sure and sure that the invention will go, isn't it? That man settled it, didn't he?"
"No risk at all in rejoicing, Mary," said Mr. Grey, disregarding Rob, and answering the girl's question to his wife, to whom he held out his arms with smiling, quivering lips, and eyes bright at once with joy and tears.
"Will it be much, Sylvester?" asked Mrs. Grey, still afraid to be glad.
"The offer? It will not be less than fifty thousand, if it is to be accepted, Mary; that will put the Grey family into brighter colors, and free the little grey house of its burden again," said Mr. Grey, stroking his wife's abundant hair. "And, Rob," he added, as the girls caught their breath with a gasp of ecstasy, "make a note of the name of John Lester Baldwin, and his address on Broadway, in New York. I will give it to you, and I want you to remind me to write him—he was a college chum of mine, an honest man and a good lawyer. I mean to take his advice as to the patent; I would trust it utterly."
Rob obediently made the memorandums on a pad, and her father straightened himself, taking a long breath. "It is a curious sensation to have succeeded, after so long," he said. "I hardly know how to adjust myself to it."