Tregennis held the letter delicately between finger and thumb and looked perplexedly at the postman, who tilted his official cap and scratched his head.
At this moment the Naval Officer’s wife came out of her room. “Are there any communications for me?” she asked.
“No ’m, nothing at all,” and Tregennis held up the unstamped letter to the light, and tried in vain to penetrate the thickness of the envelope.
“Ah, I see there is two-pence to pay,” said Annabel’s mother, who still stood in the doorway. “Perhaps you have not the money; pray use this.” She thrust forward two pennies as she spoke.
Tregennis was a man by no means given to prejudices, but for this woman he had conceived a violent dislike. “In no way thank ee, ma’am. I have plenty of money here,” and he slowly and carefully extracted from the depth of his trouser pocket one penny and one halfpenny. Shamefacedly he fumbled for a second halfpenny which could not be found. First in one pocket, then in the other he felt, until the postman showed some signs of impatience. The Naval Officer’s wife looked supercilious and returned to her room.
Tregennis, hot and uncomfortable and feeling like a thief, went to the kitchen cupboard. From the right hand corner of the second shelf he took a yellow china pig with a longways slit in its back. This rattled as he moved it, for it was Tommy’s moneybox. The only way in which the capital invested in the pig could be recovered was to turn the animal upside down and shake it in rapid jerks. Not infrequently it happened that the coins lodged right across the slit instead of slipping through. So it was to-day. At last one penny fell on the table and rolled to the floor. Stooping, Tregennis secured the penny and handing it to the now openly impatient postman received in exchange his own halfpenny and the unstamped letter addressed to his wife.
He put the letter in a prominent place on the chimney-piece, propping it up against one of the china dogs. Here Mrs. Tregennis found it a little later. “Why, my blessed fäather,” she exclaimed, when it caught her eye, “we might be made of money. We might be the quality themselves the way you do go flingin’ away tuppences right and left. Whatever made ee give tuppence for that?”
Tregennis jerked his thumb over his shoulder. “She wanted to pay!”
“Well, that was proper sensible of ee, too, Tom,” admitted his wife as she took down the unstamped letter from the chimney-piece, turned it over, and pushed her thumb under the flap.