Part 6 (1/2)
”Darling child!”
”You see, I don't like to ask father to make me a larger allowance than he makes at present.”
”Oh no,” agreed Mrs. Caffyn, apprehensively. ”I beg you won't ask him to do that.”
”So my idea was--” Norah began. She paused for a moment to think how she could express herself most tactfully. ”Mother, you have a certain amount of money of your own, haven't you?”
”Yes, dear.”
”And I suppose it's really you who makes me my allowance of twenty-five pounds a year? What I thought was that perhaps you'd rather give me a lump sum now when it would be more useful than go on paying me an allowance. Another thing is that I should hate to feel I was coming into money when you died, and, of course, if you gave me my money now I shouldn't feel that.”
”My dear child, how am I to find any large sum of money now? It's very sweet of you to put it in that way, but you don't understand how difficult these matters are.”
”How much money have you got of your own?” asked Norah.
Mrs. Caffyn thought this was rather an improper question; but Norah was looking so very grown up that she did not like to elude the answer as she had been wont to elude many answers of many childish questions through all these years of married life.
”Well, dear,” she said, with the air of one who was revealing a dangerous family secret, ”I suppose you're old enough to hear these things now. I have three hundred pounds a year of my own--at least, when I say of my own, you mustn't think that means three hundred a year to spend on myself. Your father is very just, and though he helps me as much as he is able, all the money is taken up in household expenses.”
”Well, twenty-five pounds a year,” said Norah, ”at five per cent. is the interest on five hundred pounds.”
”Is it, dear?” asked her mother, in a frightened voice.
”If you give me five hundred pounds now you wouldn't have to pay me twenty-five pounds a year. And if you lived for another twenty-five years you'd save one hundred and twenty-five pounds that way.”
Mrs. Caffyn looked as if she would soon faint at these rapid calculations.
”How am I to get five hundred pounds?” she asked, hopelessly.
”You must go and see the manager of your bank.”
”But Roland is a clerk in my bank,” Mrs. Caffyn objected. ”And what would _he_ say?”
”Roland!” repeated Norah, with scorn. ”You don't suppose Roland knows everything that goes on in the bank?”
”No, I suppose he doesn't,” agreed Mrs. Caffyn, wonderingly.
”If you like _I'll_ go and see the bank manager,” Norah offered. ”He took rather a fancy to me, I remember, when he came to supper with us once.”
”Norah, how recklessly you talk!” protested Mrs. Caffyn. But Norah was firm and she did not rest until she had persuaded her mother to ask for an interview with the manager, to whom she made herself so charming and with whom she argued so convincingly that in the end she succeeded in obtaining the 500.
”Though what your father will say I don't like to think, dear,” said Mrs. Caffyn, as she tremblingly mounted an omnibus to go home.
”I don't see why father should know anything about it, and if he does he can't say anything. It's your money.”
”Let's hope he'll never find out,” Mrs. Caffyn sighed, though she had little hope really of escaping from detection in what she felt was something perilously like a clever bank robbery--the sort of thing one read about in ill.u.s.trated magazines.
Norah determined to be very cautious at rehearsals and she advised Lily to be the same.
”Of course, we shall gradually make friends with the other girls, but don't let's be in too much of a hurry, especially as we've got each other. And if you take my advice you'll be very reserved with the men.”