The Good Comrade | Page 7

you think of selling them for us?" Julia asked, fixing her keen eyes on Johnny, so that he felt very guilty, and as if he ought to excuse himself. But before he could do it she had swept his belongings together. "You won't do anything of the kind," she said.
"Why not?"
"Because we won't have it. Pack them up."
"Oh, but," Johnny protested, "it would be a little help, it would indeed; they would fetch something, the glasses are good ones, though a bit old-fashioned, and the watch--"
"I don't care, I won't have it," and Julia took the matter into her own hands, and began with a flushed face to re-pack the things herself.
"Is it that you think I can't spare them?" Gillat asked, still bewildered. "I can--what an idea," he laughed. "What do I want with field-glasses, now? And as to a watch, my time's nothing to me!"
"No, I dare say not," Julia said, but she tied the parcel firmly, then she gave it to him. "Take it away," she said, "and don't try to sell a thing."
She opened the door as she spoke, and he, accepting it as a hint of dismissal, meekly followed her from the room. When they had reached the hall above he ventured on a last protest. "Why may I not sell anything?" he asked.
"Because we have not quite come to that," she said, with a ring of bitterness in her voice: "We have come pretty low, I know, with our dodges and our shifts, but we haven't quite come to depriving you. Johnny"--and she stretched out a hand to him, a thing which was rare, for no one thought it necessary to shake hands with Mr. Gillat--"it's very good of you to offer; I'm grateful to you; I'm awfully glad you did it; you made me ashamed."
Johnny looked at her perplexed; the note of bitterness in her voice had deepened to something more he was altogether at a loss to understand. But she gave him no opportunity for inquiry, for she opened the street door.
"Good-bye," she said, her usual self again, "and don't you let me catch you selling those things."
"Oh, I say! But how will you manage?" he protested.
"Somehow; I have got several ideas already; I'm better at this sort of game than you are, you know."
And she shut the door upon him; then she went back to Captain Polkington.
"Father," he said, "would you mind telling me if you have borrowed any other money? It would be much simpler if we knew just how we stood."
The Captain seemed to have a painfully clear idea of how he stood. "Your mother," he remarked, with apparent irrelevance, "is such an unreasonable woman; if she were like you--if she saw things sensibly. But she won't, she'll make a fuss; she will entirely overlook the fact that it is my own money that I have lost."
"I am afraid she will," Julia agreed. "Will you tell me if you lost any one else's money as well?"
"Oh, a trifle," the Captain said; "nothing to speak of yesterday; I have borrowed a little now and again, at cards and so on; a trifling accommodation."
"From whom?"
"Rawson-Clew."
Julia nodded; this was bad, but it might have been worse. Mr. Rawson-Clew was not a personal friend of the Polkingtons, and he was not a man in an inferior position who might presume upon his loan to the Captain to establish a friendly footing. On the contrary, he was in a superior position, so much so that for a moment Julia was at a loss to understand how he came to accommodate her father. Then she recalled his face--he had been pointed out to her--he looked a good-natured fool; probably he had met the Captain somewhere and been sorry for him, or perhaps he did not like to say "no." In any case he had lent the money and, so Julia fancied, would have to wait a very long time before he saw it again. She dismissed the young man from her mind and fell to working out plans to meet the more pressing difficulties.
The relations would have to help; not with money; they would not do that to a useful extent, but with invitations. Chèrie was easily provided for; Aunt Louise had before offered to take her abroad for the winter; Chèrie did not in the least want to go; it was likely to be nothing nicer than acting as unpaid companion to a fidgety old lady; but under the present circumstances she would have to go. For Violet it was not quite so easy; it would look rather odd for her to go visiting among obliging relatives, seeing that she was only just engaged--how things looked was a point the Polkingtons always considered. But it would have to be managed; Julia fancied something might