“‘Oh, mustn’t I, though!’ cried Basil. ‘Ha, you don’t know the lot of people that’s asking me; bless you, they ask a hundred times to my once!’”
The Jerichos have some rich friends, the Carraways, who live in a mansion called Jogtrot Hall, “the one central grandeur, the boast and the comfort of the village of Marigolds.” To a fête at the Hall comes an invitation to the Jerichos. It had always been Mrs. Jericho’s ambition that her girls should—“in her own nervous words”—make a blow in marriage, and she felt that perhaps the time had come. But the girls’ dresses—the “war-paint,” as Mr. Basil put it—there was the difficulty, only to be surmounted by Mr. Jericho’s yielding to the repeated cry, “When will you let me have some money?”
With but faint hopes of success, Mrs. Jericho seeks her husband in his study. In a long colloquy, she urges the importance of her daughters’ appearance at this “grand party,” and the necessity for an advance to enable them to do so properly. Mr. Jericho turns a deaf ear to her appeal, till suddenly a wonderful change comes over him.
“Quite a new look of satisfaction gleamed from his eyes, and his mouth had such a strange smile of compliance! What could ail him?”
The charm was working, the marvellous change was in operation. Mrs. Jericho fears for her husband’s sanity. “‘He doesn’t look mad,’ thought Mrs. Jericho, a little anxious.
“‘I feel as if I had got new blood, new flesh, new bones, new brain! Wonderful!’ Jericho trod up and down the room and snapt his fingers. ‘Something’s going to happen,’ said he.”
And something did indeed happen. The transformation was complete; the hard heart had given place to illimitable money.
“‘You will let me have the money?’ repeated Mrs. Jericho.
“Jericho answered not a word, but withdrew his hand from his breast. Between his finger and his thumb he held in silver purity a virgin Bank of England note for a hundred pounds. Mrs. Jericho ran delightedly off with the money.