“Although they would do you a jolly good service just at present, wouldn’t they? And you, Miss Sisseton,” he continued, turning to that young woman, who had approached the fire, her blue eyes filled with wonderment, “won’t you reward an old man, too?”
“Willingly,” she lisped, as she lowered the purity of her brow, “but the most grateful girl in the world—”
“Only offers what she can spare, and I am satisfied with it,” said the old ruffian between two kisses. “Thank you, my little beauty, I feel twenty years younger.”
“Here, here! You’ve no right to do that,” interposed Mr. Sisseton. “Stop it, I say!”
“Where did you get that jag?” John Anderson, in a tone of great interest, inquired. “Now, see here, pard; you, like myself, are a guest in this house, and it is very bad form of you to kick up a rumpus, dreadful bad form. I am surprised at you—”
“Stuff and nonsense!” growled the father.
“Yes, I am—I am surprised at you. A man of your age, too! But thundering guns! what’s that?”
And John Anderson leaned over and peered into the grate.
“Why, it’s a key,” Jenny exclaimed; “here let me get it.”
But Hugh was already at work, and in a moment he had extracted a key not at all dissimilar to one which he had seen before.
“What in the world was it doing there, I wonder?” John Anderson, with a superb assumption of surprise, remarked. “Why, it looks as though it might belong to that box on the table, there. Hugh, suppose you try and see. That box, Hugh, must be like the one from which you disinterred the one good action of my life, isn’t it?”
Hugh nodded. The key fitted perfectly. The box opened without a creak.
“Look and see what’s in it, Miss Sisseton,” the little man continued. “Look and see. A key that falls down the chimney merits attention; it may have been your good fairy that let it fall. Look and see.”
“Here! here!” growled Jenny’s father. “You have no right to do that. What would Mr.—Mr. Whatever-his-name-is say if he saw you?”
“He would say she was doing quite right, partner. Rummage away, Miss Sisseton; rummage away.”
Thus encouraged, Jenny drew out a sheaf of bills.
“Banknotes!” she cried.
“There are eighty-seven of them,” said the little man. “Partner, they are the ones you were to give to your daughter, and, as no better use can be put to them, Mr. Thughlyrh returns them to you. Take them.”
“Take them?” Mr. Sisseton repeated, drawing himself up to his full height. “But what right do you—”
“Take them, I keep telling you; and you, Miss Sisseton, rummage away.”
“Diamonds and pearls!” the girl murmured, in ecstasy.
The little man hummed contentedly:
“ ‘Du hast Diamanten und Perlen,
Du hast—tra la la, tra la laire,
Du ha—hast die schönsten Augen,
Mein Liebling, was willst du noch mehr?’
Go on” he continued, “go on. Those diamonds and pearls are Mr. Thughlyrh’s wedding present to his bride.”
“But tell me, you shall tell me,” barked Mr. Sisseton, the perspiration streaming in the hollows of his cheek, “who is Mr. Thughlyrh? Is he—you, or is he the devil?”
“Neither. Do you wish to see him?”
“Of course, I do.”
“Well, then, the young and attractive Mr. Thughlyrh, who is to marry a beauty; the rich Mr. Thughlyrh, whose guests we are, is—”
“Who?” cried Jenny, while her lover pricked up his ears.
“—Is Hugh Hyrtl.”
“I!”
“Why, of course; I thought you had guessed it before. Thughlyrh is the anagram of your name, and, thundering guns! a hard one it was to make.”
“But the house?” said Hugh, beside himself with excitement.
“Rummage in the box, Miss Sisseton.”
In the box was a brief deed in Hugh’s name—signed, sealed and attested.
“It’s too much,” cried the young fellow, “I can’t accept it.”
John Anderson raised his hand, his face had become grave and serious.
“Dear boy,” he said, “let me, according to my lights, make amends for the past. No doubt I should have have done so sooner, but if I prolonged your sorrow, if I masqueraded in rags in your room, if I pretended to be more indigent than before, it was because I had not yet discovered Miss Sisseton. I wanted to restore her to you when I restored your money. From that test you issued as an angel might. Anyone else would have killed me; you gave me alms. Be generous to the end, Hugh. Don’t refuse what I am well able to give. Don’t leave me to my remorse.”
“So be it,” Hugh answered. “I accept the house on condition I may return it the next time you go broke.”
“Don’t count on that. I am forever cured of speculation. Hereafter I shall live on my income, and play whist with my partner here.”
“But for the love of heaven,” the old clerk implored, “tell me what all this means.”
“It means,” said the little man, rising as he spoke from his seat. “It means that I have encountered two things that I have never encountered before.”
“What are they?”
“Charity and forgiveness,” John Anderson answered, taking Hugh by one hand; “and absolute honesty,” he continued, stretching the other to Jenny’s papa.
“And now, dear lady and sweet sirs,” he added, with a large, old-fashioned bow, “do me the favor to step into the other room; a little feast has been prepared, the feast of betrothal, and from the wall where he laughs and lounges let Heliogabalus shower as many flowers as he may. There, do you hear the corks popping? Thundering guns! I shall drink deep tonight.”
A Fifth Avenue Story
“I told my father that you expected to make a hundred thousand this year. He said he didn’t believe in miracles.”
It was Mrs. Carol Nevius who, from the head of the dinner-table, addressed her husband.
“Did he though! That’s odd, seeing that it has taken a succession of them to keep him out of Sing Sing.”
Mrs. Nevius laughed. She was a pretty little woman, very well dressed, with a noticeably good manner.
