‘Not that way,’ I objected. ‘It is necessary for us to go upstairs.’
With ever-deepening chagrin M. Rattache followed me, as I ascended to
the schoolroom in which his little daughters were at play with their
dolls.
They rushed to embrace me with exclamations of joy.
‘Isabel,’ I said to the eldest, a bright girl of twelve, ‘now you
shall show the others the hiding-place where we put the box of
bricks.’
A cry of delight greeted this proposal. Isabel ran gaily in front to
lead the party into her own little bedroom, where, under a loose
plank, which this observant child had discovered, and the knowledge
of which she had kept to herself with that marvellous secrecy of
which children are sometimes capable, lay--the Humbert millions!
Isabel was a little disappointed to find, when the box was opened,
that her bricks had been changed into stupid pieces of paper. But I
explained that a fairy had been at work, and that a new and better
set of bricks would arrive by the next post.
And so, I am relieved to say, terminated my connection with the
Humbert Case.