"Yes, of course I understand; only I think none of us quite know what father is capable of," she responded.
"There I agree with you," he retorted grimly. "And I'll talk about going when I've had a chance to inquire into the matter. Don't turn me out before it's necessary; it happens that I'm rather a lonely man."
"You'll be able to come down and see us as often as you like—to stay with us," she reminded him; but to that he made no answer.
That arch-plotter Daniel Meggison had been spending an anxious hour or two in search of his patron. Inquiry at the front of the house next door elicited the information that Mr. Gilbert Byfield was having his bath; the landlady a little contemptuous concerning a man who found it necessary to wash all over every day. An impromptu peep over the wall at the back was equally useless. The only occupation left to Daniel Meggison was to saunter about the house, and to carry things with a high hand, and yet with a failing courage.
His man might escape at any moment, and go out into that world outside Arcadia Street, and never come back. The people with whom hitherto Daniel had had dealings were in the habit of repudiating a promise at a day or even an hour's notice; it was quite on the cards that this young man would do the same. Daniel Meggison began to wish that he had in some fashion got the thing reduced to writing; more than that, he began to doubt the actual value of that asset on which he had counted—his daughter. Therefore Simon Quarle, coming upon him unexpectedly, and thrusting his head out at him in characteristic fashion, found the man in no mood for questions.
"It's all right," said Meggison, with a very distinct air of its being all wrong. "I have been lucky—fortunate; I have kept my eyes open."
"How much have you made?" demanded Quarle stolidly. "Always better to come to figures, you know."
"It doesn't concern you—and I am inclined to keep my particular figures to myself," snapped Daniel Meggison. "Suffice it that this system of living is ceasing; suffice it that I no longer find it necessary to depend for my income upon lodgers whose payments are not what they should be, and whose manners do not please me."
"Keep your temper, Meggison; there's nothing that should call for personal remarks. If you didn't like my manners you could have got rid of me years ago—always supposing, of course, that it suited me to go. Meantime, we're no nearer to this mysterious fortune—are we? Exactly in what particular investments were you so very lucky?"
"The investments were—were various," said Daniel Meggison, with a wave of the hand. "A little bit in this—and a little bit in that; it's taken quite a long time—but it's growing even now."