Jessamy, Phyllis, and Bab were crying softly, but their faces were flushed with joy and bright with smiles. "Oh, here's Tom!" cried Bab, as she always did when she heard Tom's peculiar ring, and ran to the door to bring him in.
"Hallo, Bob, old man! I see you've got it!" cried Tom, the instant he entered and saw the April faces. "Well, talk about special providences; wasn't it about the neatest bit of good fortune you ever knew that you should have witnessed those deeds, and had your desk in old Abbott's office? And I believe you'll get your reward, too," he added for Robert's ear alone. "Leave it to me, and I'll manage the others—give you a chance. I tell you, Mother Wyndham, I'm tremendously glad. Now it's over, and you know the whole story, I'll tell you that my engagement to Bab depended on the recovery of this money. If it hadn't been captured I should have broken it off—I wouldn't marry a girl without a little fortune."
"She hasn't married you yet, sir, that girl-with-a-fortune, so you'd better not be too sure of her. I may use my share of the forty thousand to go off to fashionable watering-places this summer, and invest in a little French title attached to a little French man," said Bab, saucily, so saucily that Aunt Henrietta said severely:
"Barbara, such jests are not seemly."
"Now, Mother Wyndham," continued Tom, "aren't you going to treat on the joyful occasion? In default of champagne and grouse, I propose a Welsh rabbit in the chafing-dish, and anything else to be found; and, as Jessamy is the chief conspirator of the family, the one who got into the plot first, I think she ought to make it. Go out to the kitchen, Princess, please, and make us a rabbit."
"Violet is out," began Mrs. Wyndham, hesitating.
"Splendid!" said Tom the artful, who had remembered this fact when he spoke. "Violet is no good at rabbits. Please be nice, Jessamy, and make it."
"Of course I will," said Jessamy, rising.
"Maybe some one will help you," continued Tom, a hand on Phyllis's and Bab's arm warning them not to offer. "I would, only I am not proficient."