The next day she went to the lawyer's office and heard all about the legacy and what she must do to prove her own identity and claim it. Mr. Gillat waited outside, pacing up and down the street, striving so hard to look casual that he aroused the suspicions of a not too acute policeman. The official was reassured, however, when Julia came out of the office and carried Johnny away to hear about the legacy.
"It is more than I thought," she said, before they were half down the street. "Fifty pounds a year, a small house--not much more than a cottage--and a garden and field; that's about what it comes to. The house is not worth much; it is in an unget-at-able part of Norfolk, in the sandy district towards the sea--the man spoke as if I knew where that was, but I don't--and the garden and field are not fertile. I don't suppose one could let the place, but one could live in it, if one wanted to."
"Yes, yes," Johnny said, "of course; you will have your own estate to retire to; quite an heiress--your mother will be pleased."
Julia could well imagine what skilful use her mother could make of the legacy; it would figure beautifully in conversation; no doubt Johnny was really thinking of this also, though he did not know it, for actually the thing would not commend itself to Mrs. Polkington so highly as a lump sum of money would have done.
"Why do you think Great-aunt Jane let it to me?" Julia asked. "Because I went out to work! It seems that father and we three girls are the nearest relations she had, and though we knew nothing about her, she made inquiries about us from time to time. When she heard I had gone abroad as companion or lady-help, she said she should leave all she had to me because I was the only one who even tried to do any honest work. You know that is not really strictly fair, because I did not altogether go with the idea of doing honest work; although, certainly, when I got there I did it."
Johnny did not quite follow this last, but it did not matter, the only thing that concerned him--or Julia much, either--was the fact that she was the possessor of £50 a year, a cottage, a garden, and a field. Johnny revelled in the idea and talked of what she was going to do right up to the time that he saw her into the train at Paddington. The only thing that put an end to his talking was the guard requesting him to stand away from the carriage door and Julia admonished him to leave go of the handle before the engine started. Julia herself did not talk so much of what she would do because she did not know; she felt, until she got home and saw how things were there, it was no good even to plan how and when to spend. Five pounds she did spend; it was really her saving accumulated by economy in Holland, but she reckoned it as drawn from her estate. Johnny found it in an envelope when he returned to the back bedroom, and with it a note to say that it was in part payment of Captain Polkington's debts, for which, of course, his family were responsible; "and if you make a fuss about it," the letter concluded, dropping the business-like style, "I shall trim 'Bouquet' to stink next time you come to Marbridge, and not come and sit with you."