When she had written out this message, she untied the string of the
bag and poured the contents into her hand. She had expected to find a
few shillings. She started with surprise.
"Gold! All gold!" She counted. "Twelve pounds!" Then for a moment she
stood in thought, tore up the telegram she had written, and walked
quickly back to the tower.
Here a difficulty presented itself. How was she to summon the old man
from the top or from the pit? If he was above, the feeble sound of her
hand beating against that door would never be heard, even at night.
But now in the day, owing to the roar of traffic around, she could not
make herself heard if he was in the pit beneath.
What was she to do? This was the only door. Under the circumstances
she did not care to ask the aid of any passer-by, lest it might anger
the old man. Notwithstanding her conviction that the effort would be
fruitless, she did knock at the massive door with her hand.
There came no response. For a quarter of an hour she stood and knocked
unavailingly. Then she turned to go, and hastened to Ludgate Circus.
She had taken no heed of time, and when she got to the Circus she was
horrified to find herself twenty minutes behind the time appointed.
She glanced hastily round, but could not see the old man. Then she
carefully examined with her eye each of the four sections that make up
the Circus. She found no one she knew. The hurrying crowd and throng
of vehicles 'confused her senses and her mind. The old man had not
indicated to her the section in which he would meet her, and to her
eyes, unaccustomed as they were to the ceaseless turmoil of traffic in
the City, it seemed almost impossible to find anyone in that place.
She waited half-an-hour vainly. Then she began to despair. Whither
should she turn? That tower in Porter Street now seemed as
inaccessible to her as the centre of the Great Pyramid. This
dereliction of to-day was harder to bear than that of yesterday;
for since her desperate resolve the previous night she had found a
friend--nay, more, a close relative--who was also the friend of the
man she loved, and who was willing and able to help her. Had she not
with her the proof of this willingness and this ability?
Then, as she betook herself once more in the direction of St. Prisca's
Tower, she remembered he had said the money he gave her that morning
would do for the present. She was therefore, of course, at liberty to
employ the money as she chose. It was hers to use, for a grandfather
had of course a perfect right to give his grand-daughter money, and
the granddaughter had a perfect right to accept it.
Once more she found herself in the doorway of the tower. She stood a
while looking up and down the busy way, when all at once, to her great
joy, she saw the old man approaching.
"My dear child, where have you been? I have been greatly frightened
about you."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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