"I don't think, General, that, if I were you, I should ask too many questions like that--it might be awkward for everyone concerned. The sum I have named is my lowest figure; my very lowest. As I believe the lawyers put it, it is named without prejudice. Unless I receive a cheque for that amount during the next fifteen minutes by that clock on the shelf, the figure will be raised. And as, also, if I am to remain for dinner there is not much time for me to put on my other frock--a startler, General, I give you my word!--I shall be obliged if you will not keep me a moment longer than you can help."
The General stared still more. It burst on him, with the force of an electric shock, that his young friend had placed himself in a very peculiar position indeed. Some remarks, in good, plain Saxon, were exchanged. As a result, the General interviewed his principal. After a period of time, which probably did not much exceed the fifteen minutes she had named, the lady quitted the house she had so recently entered as an invited guest, with her brown-paper parcels, and her cardboard bonnet-box, but without that sheet of paper on which Sir Frank Pickard had placed a formal undertaking to make her his wife.
That same night when, at last, Joe Lamb was enabled, by the closing of his master's shop, to get out into the streets to obtain what, comparatively speaking, was a mouthful of fresh air, he received a boisterous salute from a female in gorgeous and fantastic attire.
"Hullo, Joey! How goes it, my gay young pippin?"
He showed signs of objecting both to the address, and the person from whom it came.
"Don't holler at me like that; who are you? Why--if it isn't Peggy! What's the meaning of this Guy Fawkes show?"
"Crummy, isn't it? It's earned me that."
She held out in front of him a slip of paper. He took it in his fingers.
"What's this?--a cheque?--payable to you!--for five thousand pounds! Peggy, what does this mean?"
"It means that what I told you of 's come off, and before next Sunday, too. It means that I've been engaged to be married since I saw you; and now I'm disengaged again; and I've been paid five thousand pounds for allowing myself to be disengaged again. It was this rig-out did it. You remember that scene at the Frivolity, where the costers were supposed to take their donahs to Hampstead Heath on a bank holiday? This was one of the costumes which the girls wore. The sight of it was enough for Sir Frank Pickard and his aristocratic friends. I could have got ten thousand if I'd liked, but I was satisfied with five. Joe, that means that you needn't emigrate; and that we can be married whenever you like."