On the same morning the paper was opened and scanned almost
simultaneously by Mrs. Frederick Bathurst in the sitting-room which she
and her husband occupied at the Grand Hotel, and by Mr. Hartley Friend
in the morning-room at "The Limes."
"Oh, Fred," exclaimed Mrs. Bathurst, "Cherub has been found. He's all
safe at a house called 'The Limes,' in Cheviot Road. Isn't that
splendid?"
"Very good news," said her husband. "I told you not to worry."
"It's a direct answer to prayer," said Mrs. Bathurst. "But--"
"But what?" her husband inquired.
"But I do wish you had taken my advice not to offer any reward. You
might so easily have left it open. People aren't so mercenary as all
that. It stands to reason that anyone staying at an hotel like this and
bringing a dog with them--always an expensive thing to do--and valuing
it enough to advertise its loss, would behave properly when the time
came."
"I don't know," Mr. Bathurst replied. "Does anything stand to reason?
The ordinary dog-thief, holding up an animal to ransom, might be
deterred from returning it if no mention of money was made. You remember
we decided on that."
"Oh, no, I don't think so. You merely had your way again, that was all.
I was always against offering a reward. And the word 'handsome' too. In
any case I never agreed to that. You put that in later. Another thing,"
Mrs. Bathurst continued, "I knew it in some curious way--in my bones, as
they say--that the fineness of Cherub's nature, its innocence, its
radiant friendliness, would overcome any sordidness in the person who
found him, poor darling, all lost and unhappy. No one who has been much
with that simple sweet character could fail to be the better for it."
Mr. Bathurst coughed.
"That is so?" his wife persisted.
"Well," said Mr. Bathurst, after helping himself to another egg, "let us
hope so, at any rate."
"It's gone beyond mere hope," said his wife triumphantly. "Listen to
this;" and she read out the sentence from the second advertisement, "'No
reward required.' There," she added, "isn't that proof? I'll go round to
Cheviot Road directly after breakfast and say how grateful we are, and
bring the darling back."