Booksellers and bookselling -- England -- Fiction; Families -- Fiction; Inheritance and succession -- Fiction
Then Iris came down again. Her grandfather was sleeping. Like a child,
he fell asleep the moment his head fell upon the pillow.
"Iris," he said, "this is no delusion of your grandfather's. The
parcel has been robbed."
"How do you know, Arnold?"
"The stupid fellow who stole and opened the packet no doubt thought he
was wonderfully clever to fill it up again with paper. But he forgot
that the packet has been lying for eighteen years in the safe, and
that this note-paper was made the day before yesterday."
"How do you know that?"
"You can tell by the look and feel of the paper; they did not make
paper like this twenty years ago; besides, look at the water-mark;" he
held it to the light, and Iris read the mystic words. "That is the
fashion of to-day. One house issues a new kind of paper, with a fancy
name, and another imitates them. To-morrow, I will ascertain exactly
when this paper was made."
"But who would steal it, Arnold? Who could steal it?"
"It would not probably be of the least use to any one. But it might be
stolen in order to sell it back. We may see an advertisement carefully
worded, guarded, or perhaps--Iris, who had access to the place, when
your grandfather was out?"
"No one but James, the shopman. He has been here five-and-twenty
years. He would not, surely, rob his old master. No one else comes
here except the customers and Cousin Joe."
"Joe is not, I believe, quite--"
"Joe is a very bad man. He has done dreadful things. But then, even if
Joe were bad enough to rob the safe, how could he get at it? My
grandfather never leaves it unlocked. Oh, Arnold, Arnold, that all
this trouble should fall upon us on the very day--"
"My dear, is it not better that it should fall upon you when I am
here, one more added to your advisers? If you have lost a fortune, I
have found one. Think that you have given it to me."
"Oh, the fortune may go," she said. "The future is ours, and we are
young. But who shall console my grandfather in his old age for his
bankruptcy?"
"As the stream," said Lala Roy, "which passeth from the mountains to
the ocean, kisseth every meadow on its way, yet tarries not in any
place, so Fortune visits the sons of men; she is unstable as the wind;
who shall hold her? Let not adversity tear off the wings of hope."
They could do nothing more. Arnold replaced the paper in the packet,
and gave it to Iris; they put back the ledgers and account-books in
the safe, and locked it up, and then they went upstairs.
"You shall go to bed, Iris," said Arnold, "and you, too, Lala Roy. I
shall stay here, in case Mr. Emblem should--should want anything."
He was, in reality, afraid that "something would happen" to the old
man. His sudden loss of memory, his loss of self-control when he spoke
of his bankruptcy, the confusion of his words, told clearly of a mind
unhinged. He could not go away and leave Iris with no better
protection than one other weak old man.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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