That afternoon a messenger boy rapped at the studio door with a letter from the Express office for Katherine.
"Dear Mrs. Carroll," it ran, "we think you deserve a two weeks' vacation at full salary which is now double the former sum, and we beg you to accept the enclosed check as a slight testimonial of our gratitude for the biggest scoop of the year. Please report for duty on the eighteenth, and be ready to take the exchange editor's desk."
She was dazed. "Two weeks' vacation, double salary, promotion, and——"
Robert picked it up, it was a check for two hundred dollars.
During the jubilation which followed, a telegraph boy pounded vigorously at the door, but he might as well have kept still, since his efforts were unheard. Finally he opened it, and utterly unabashed by the spectacle of a gentleman kissing a lady, and the lady seeming to enjoy it, he fairly shrieked: "telegram."
Katherine vanished instantly, and Carroll read the despatch.
"Picture sold for highest price. Purchaser unknown.
"Stanley & Brown."
The mythical "quail on toast" became a reality that night, and the house seemed far too small to hold so much exuberant joy. In the morning, they went together to Stanley & Brown's to collect the picture money, and start a "really truly bank account," as Katherine said.
The firm was quite at a loss to know who the purchaser was, as he took the picture away with him in a carriage, and paid cash instead of by check, but the man who helped him put it on the back seat of the carriage reported that he had muttered to himself, as he was climbing in: "That's her! That's the girl what done it!" This may have given Mr. and Mrs. Carroll some clue to the identity of the unknown benefactor.