“Look here!” said Mr. Ardwick, with a determined effort. “I want to have a quiet talk with you. I’ve stood this very excellent meal, and it’s only right you should do something for me in return.”
“Anything within reason.”
“I’m not the man to ask you to do anything else. You’ve had your little joke at my expense and now my suggestion is that you hand across the five pounds, and we’ll both have a good laugh over the transaction. I admit you played your part uncommonly well. You ran it rather close, and if you’d been a minute or so later, my lad, you’d have found the bank closed, and then I could have stopped payment.”
“I got there,” said Kimball, “at one minute past four, and the doors were shut!”
Mr. Ardwick settled up, and told Kimball exactly what he thought of him.
“Imposing on generosity,” he said heatedly—“that’s your game!”
He went off home to write a letter to the bank, and to recognise that matters had, after all, turned out better than he might have expected. In the evening he made his usual call here, dressed up special, and evidently anxious to find out what sort of an effect his display of benevolence had made on Mrs. I.
“I can’t help seeing,” she said confidentially, taking the evening paper from another customer and handing it to Mr. Ardwick, “that I’ve, all along, done you an injustice. I liked your conversation, and I had no fault to find with your general behaviour; but somehow I had an idea that you rather over-did the economical.”
“If I come across a really deserving case,” remarked Mr. Ardwick modestly, “I’m prepared to give away my last penny. I don’t say I scatter my money broadcast, but when I do give I give liberally and with both hands.”
“I was telling the poor man,” said Mrs. Ingram, “that he ought to feel very much indebted to you. You’ve stood him on his feet, so to speak, and, whatever it may lead to, he’s only got you to thank.”