“I wonder,” she murmured presently, “how Uncle Archibald and George will take my sudden departure? Well, I’m glad George is out of town. He’s been showing signs of spoons lately with me, so it’s best, perhaps, that I should get off without seeing him.”
By eleven that forenoon she had left Waterloo. Her uncle had seen her off from the station. He wanted to accompany her to Southampton, but she would not hear of it.
“I want to be very quiet all the way down,” she said, “and write some important letters. Make my excuses to everybody, and explain that I only had an hour or two to do everything.”
At the last moment her uncle slipped an envelope into her hand, saying, “You are not to open it until you have been travelling a quarter of an hour.”
Then came the good-byes, and—off.
She had been travelling nearly a quarter of an hour when she opened the envelope. There was a brief, hearty, loving note inside, in her uncle’s hand-writing, expressing the joy her visit had given him, and his sense of loneliness at her going, and saying:
“Please, dear Madge, accept the enclosure in second envelope, as a souvenir of your visit, from your affectionate
“Nunkums.”
She opened the smaller envelope. To her breathless amazement, she found a Bank of England note for £1,000. When she recovered herself a little, a smile filled her eyes as she murmured: