“True enough,” growled David.
“’Twas all along of his good fortune, ma’am,” said sunny Jonathan. “He was so elated with it that he slipped down Gaffer Thorpe’s steps, where he was going to tell the news, and fell upon his ankle. The damage ain’t of much account. But that’s old father all over! Prime him up with a piece of good fortune, and he is all cock-a-hoop about it.”
“What is the good fortune?” asked Maria.
“It’s that money come to him at last, ma’am, what he had waited for so long. I’m sure we had all given it up for lost; and father stewed and fretted over it, wondering always what was going to become of him in his old age. ’Tain’t so very much, neither.”
“Sixty pound is sixty pound,” grunted David.
“Well, so it is,” acquiesced Jonathan. “And father looks to it to make him more comfortable than he could be from his profits; his honey, and his garden, and that. He was like a child last night, ma’am, planning what he’d do with it. I told him he had better take care not to lose it.”
“Let him bring it to the Bank,” said Maria. “Tell him I say so, Jonathan. It will be safe here. He might be paid interest for it.”
“I will, ma’am.”
Maria spoke the words in good faith. Her mind had conjured up a vision of old Jekyl keeping his sixty pounds in his house, at the foot of some old stocking: and she thought how easily he might be robbed of it. “Yes, Jonathan, tell him to bring it here: don’t let him keep it at home, to lose it.”
Maria had another auditor, of whose presence she was unconscious. It was her mother. Mrs. Hastings had been admitted by a servant, and came through the room to the terrace unheard by Maria. The little girl’s ears—like all children’s—were quick, and she turned, and broke into a joyous cry of “Grandma!” Maria looked round.