I remain, respectfully yours, Herbert Parker.
Lucille clapped her hands.
“How splendid! Father will be pleased!”
“Yes. Friend Parker has certainly found a way to make the old dad fond of him. Wish I could!”
“But you can, silly! He’ll be delighted when you show him that letter.”
“Yes, with Parker. Old Herb. Parker’s is the neck he’ll fall on–not mine.”
Lucille reflected.
“I wish–” she began. She stopped. Her eyes lit up. “Oh, Archie, darling, I’ve got an idea!”
“Decant it.”
“Why don’t you slip up to New York to-morrow and buy the thing, and give it to father as a surprise?”
Archie patted her hand kindly. He hated to spoil her girlish day- dreams.
“Yes,” he said. “But reflect, queen of my heart! I have at the moment of going to press just two dollars fifty in specie, which I took off your father this after-noon. We were playing twenty-five cents a Hole. He coughed it tip without enthusiasm–in fact, with a nasty hacking sound–but I’ve got it. But that’s all I have got.”
“That’s all right. You can pawn that ring and that bracelet of mine.”
“Oh, I say, what! Pop the family jewels?”
“Only for a day or two. Of course, once you’ve got the thing, father will pay us back. He would give you all the money we asked him for, if he knew what it was for. But I want to surprise him. And if you were to go to him and ask him for a thousand dollars without telling him what it was for, he might refuse.”
“He might!” said Archie. “He might!”
“It all works out splendidly. To-morrow’s the Invitation Handicap, and father’s been looking forward to it for weeks. He’d hate to have to go up to town himself and not play in it. But you can slip up and slip back without his knowing anything about it.”
Archie pondered.
“It sounds a ripe scheme. Yes, it has all the ear-marks of a somewhat fruity wheeze! By Jove, it IS a fruity wheeze! It’s an egg!”
“An egg?”
“Good egg, you know. Halloa, here’s a postscript. I didn’t see it.”
P.S.–I should be glad if you would convey my most cordial respects to Mrs. Moffam. Will you also inform her that I chanced to meet Mr. William this morning on Broadway, just off the boat. He desired me to send his regards and to say that he would be joining you at Brookport in the course of a day or so. Mr. B. will be pleased to have him back. “A wise son maketh a glad father” (Proverbs x. 1).
“Who’s Mr. William?” asked Archie.
“My brother Bill, of course. I’ve told you all about him.”
“Oh yes, of course. Your brother Bill. Rummy to think I’ve got a brother-in-law I’ve never seen.”
“You see, we married so suddenly. When we married, Bill was in Yale.”
“Good God! What for?”
“Not jail, silly. Yale. The university.”
“Oh, ah, yes.”
“Then he went over to Europe for a trip to broaden his mind. You must look him up to-morrow when you get back to New York. He’s sure to be at his club.”
“I’ll make a point of it. Well, vote of thanks to good old Parker! This really does begin to look like the point in my career where I start to have your forbidding old parent eating out of my hand.”
“Yes, it’s an egg, isn’t it!”
“Queen of my soul,” said Archie enthusiastically, “it’s an omelette!”
The business negotiations in connection with the bracelet and the ring occupied Archie on his arrival in New York to an extent which made it impossible for him to call on Brother Bill before lunch. He decided to postpone the affecting meeting of brothers-in-law to a more convenient season, and made his way to his favourite table at the Cosmopolis grill-room for a bite of lunch preliminary to the fatigues of the sale. He found Salvatore hovering about as usual, and instructed him to come to the rescue with a minute steak.
Salvatore was the dark, sinister-looking waiter who attended, among other tables, to the one at the far end of the grill-room at which Archie usually sat. For several weeks Archie’s conversations with the other had dealt exclusively with the bill of fare and its contents; but gradually he had found himself becoming more personal. Even before the war and its democratising influences, Archie had always lacked that reserve which characterises many Britons; and since the war he had looked on nearly everyone he met as a brother. Long since, through the medium of a series of friendly chats, he had heard all about Salvatore’s home in Italy, the little newspaper and tobacco shop which his mother owned down on Seventh Avenue, and a hundred other personal details. Archie had an insatiable curiosity about his fellow-man.