This woke up Iden for the moment. First there was a rummaging about in his old bureau, and a laborious writing of letters, or adding up of figures. Next there was a great personal getting up, a bath, clean linen, shaving, and donning of clothes packed away these years past. In two hours or so Iden came down another man, astonishingly changed, quite a gentleman in every respect, and so handsome in Amaryllis's eyes. Indeed, he was really handsome still, and to her, of course, wonderfully so. If only he would always dress like that!
Iden walked into Woolhorton, but all these preparations had so consumed the time that the bank was shut, the solicitor's offices closed, and there was no means of raising any money that evening. The son passed the father's doorstep—the worn stone step, ground by the generations of customers—he saw the light behind the blind in the little room where Grandfather Iden sat—he might, had he paused and listened, have heard the old man poke the fire, the twenty-thousand-guinea-man—the son passed on, and continued his lonely walk home, the home that held a bailiff.
A makeshift bed had to be made up for the bailiff in the kitchen, and there he remained the night, and was up and had lit the fire for Luce the servant before she was down. The man was certainly very civil, but still there was the shock of it.
Early in the morning Iden went into town again, saw his solicitor, and got a cheque—it was only five-and-twenty or thirty pounds, and the bailiff left.
CHAPTER XXIII.
