"I am quite aware that it will cost a large amount of bribery," said Christie, with a smile which proved her faith in her own powers in that line; "will ten pounds do it, Mr. Frank, should you suppose?"
Though far gone in that brilliant and gloomy, nadir and zenith, tropical and arctic, condition of the human mind, called love, Frank Gilham was of English nature; which, though torn up by the roots, ceases not to stick fast to the main chance. And so much the nobler on his part was this, because the money was not his, nor ever likely so to be.
"I think that three pounds ought to do it, or even fifty shillings," he replied, with an estimate perhaps too low of the worth of the British domestic. "If we could choose a day when old Binstock is off duty, it would save the biggest tip of all. And it would not matter what he thought afterwards, though doubtless he would be in a fury."
"Oh, I won't do it. I don't think I can do it. It does seem so nasty, and underhanded."
Coming now to the practical part, Miss Fox was suddenly struck with the objections.
"My dear, I am very glad that you have come to see it in such a proper light;" cried Mrs. Gilham a little prematurely, while her son nodded very sagely, ready to say "Amen" to either side, according to the final jump of the vacillating reasoner.
"No, but I won't then. I won't see it so. When people behave most improperly to you, are you bound to stand upon propriety with them? Just answer me that, if you can, Mrs. Gilham. My mind is quite settled by that consideration. I'll go in for it wholesale, Binstock and all, if he means a five-pound note for every stripe in his waistcoat."
"Mr. Binstock is much too grand to wear a striped waistcoat;" said Frank with the gravity of one who understands his subject. "But he goes to see his parents every Wednesday. And he will not be wronged in reality, for it will be worth all that to him, for the rise he will get by his absence."
"Binstock's parents! Why he must be over sixty!" exclaimed Frank's mother in amazement. She had greatly undervalued her son's knowledge.
"They are both in the poorhouse at Pumpington, the father eighty-five and the mother eighty-two. They married too early in life," said Frank, "and each of their fifteen children leaves the duty of supporting them to the other fourteen. Our Binstock is the most filial of the whole, for he takes his parents two ounces of tobacco every Wednesday."