For answer he put his hand into his pocket, drew out Mr. Marston’s letter and gave it to her.
April pulled it out of the envelope, hurriedly unfolded it, and ran an engrossed eye over its contents.
“Oh, but how splendid, Roland; now it’s all right. Now there’s no need to worry about anything. Come at once and tell mother. Mother, mother!” she shouted, and catching Roland by the hand dragged him after her towards the drawing-room.
Mrs. Curtis had, through the laborious passage of fifty-two uneventful years, so trained her face to assume on all occasions an expression of pleasant sentimental interest in the affairs of others that by now her features could not be arranged to accommodate any other emotion. She appeared therefore unastonished when her name was called loudly in the hall, when the drawing-room door was flung open and a flushed, excited April stood in the doorway grasping by the hand an equally flushed but embarrassed Roland. Mrs. Curtis laid her knitting in her lap; a kindly smile spread over her glazed countenance.
“Well, my dear, and what’s all this about?” she said.
“Oh, it’s so exciting, mother. Roland’s not going into a bank after all.”
“No, mother. A Mr. Marston, you know the man whom Roland went to stay with last week, has offered him a post in his firm. It’s a lovely job. He’ll be traveling all over the world and he’s going to get a salary; of how much is it--yes, a hundred and fifty pounds a year and all expenses paid. Isn’t it splendid?”
Mrs. Curtis purred with reciprocated pleasure: “Of course it is, and how pleased your parents must be. Come and sit down here; yes, shut the door, please. You know I always said to Mr. Whately, ‘Roland is going to do something big; I’m sure of it.’ And now you see my prophecy has come true. I shall remind Mr. Whately of that next time he comes round to see me, and I shall remind him, too, that I said exactly the same thing about Arthur. ‘Mr. Whately,’ I said,” and her voice trailed off into reminiscences.
But though Mrs. Curtis was in many--and indeed in most--ways a troublesome old fool, she was not unobservant. She knew that a young girl does not rush into a drawing-room dragging a young man by the hand simply because that young man has obtained a lucrative post in a varnish factory. There must be some other cause for so vigorous an ebullition. And as Mrs. Curtis’s speculation was unvexed by the complexities of Austrian psychology, she assumed that Roland and April had fallen in love with each other. She was not surprised. She had indeed often wondered why they had not done so before. April was such a dear girl, and Roland could be trained into a highly sympathetic son-in-law. He listened to her conversation with respect and interest, whereas Ralph Richmond insisted on interrupting her. Roland would make April a good husband. Certainly she had been temporarily disquieted by Mr. Whately’s sudden decision to remove his son from school; but no doubt he had had this post in his mind’s eye and had not wished to speak of it till everything had been fixed.