“Yes, with Parker. Old Herb. Parker’s is the neck he’ll fall on—not mine.”
Lucille reflected.
“I wish—” she began. She stopped. Her eyes lit up. “Oh, Archie, darling, I’ve got an idea!”
“Decant it.”
“Why don’t you slip up to New York to-morrow and buy the thing, and give it to father as a surprise?”
Archie patted her hand kindly. He hated to spoil her girlish day-dreams.
“Yes,” he said. “But reflect, queen of my heart! I have at the moment of going to press just two dollars fifty in specie, which I took off your father this after-noon. We were playing twenty-five cents a hole. He coughed it up without enthusiasm—in fact, with a nasty hacking sound—but I’ve got it. But that’s all I have got.”
“That’s all right. You can pawn that ring and that bracelet of mine.”
“Oh, I say, what! Pop the family jewels?”
“Only for a day or two. Of course, once you’ve got the thing, father will pay us back. He would give you all the money we asked him for, if he knew what it was for. But I want to surprise him. And if you were to go to him and ask him for a thousand dollars without telling him what it was for, he might refuse.”