The cashier started. “I, sir? I don’t think I——”
“Oh, you understand, man!” The banker was much moved. “You understand very well. Walker of Wolverhampton? You’ve a brother at Wolverhampton, I remember, though I don’t think I’ve ever seen him. This is your three hundred, and all you could add to it. My G—d, man——” Ovington was certainly moved, for he seldom swore, “but if we go you’ll lose it! You must draw it out before the bank opens to-morrow.”
“No,” said Rodd, who had turned red. “I shall do nothing of the sort, sir. It’s as safe there as anywhere. I’m not afraid.”
“But I don’t understand,” Betty said, looking from one to the other. It couldn’t be true. It could not be that she had made such a—a dreadful mistake!
“There’s no Mr. Walker,” her father explained, “and no gentleman from Bretton. They are both Rodd. It’s his money.”
“Do you mean——” in a very small voice. “I thought that Mr. Rodd took his money out!”
“Only to put it in again when he thought that it might help us more. But we can’t have it. He mustn’t lose his money, all I expect that he——”
“It came out of the bank,” Rodd said, “And there’s where it belongs, and I’m not going,” stubbornly, “to take it out. I’ve been here ten years—very comfortable, sir. And if the bank closed where’d I be? It’s my interest that it shouldn’t close.”
The banker turned to the fire and put one foot on the fender as if to warm it. “Well, let it stay,” he said, but his voice was unsteady. “If we have to close you’ll have done a silly thing—that’s all. But if we don’t, you’ll not have been such a fool!”
“Oh, we shall not close,” Rodd boasted, and he gulped down his tea, his ears red.