“C. Q.”; or, In the Wireless House
The girl began to cry again softly.
“He would do it!” she sobbed. “I told him no judge would sentence father if he knew why he ’d done it,—but Jim would do it!”
“Who—would do it?” inquired Micky. “Come, you might as well put some confidence in me and let me have the whole story.”
“There ’s no particular story,” she answered. “Father took the money to pay the doctors for mother and send her on the trip to Egypt. You see he ’d been employed there all his life,—but he could n’t ask the bank for money. And Sir Penniston Crisp, the great specialist, you know, said mother must have all kinds of care, trained nurses, and so on, and travel. He said she ’d die without them. Well, mother was sixty-one and father was sixty-seven and we only had his salary—two hundred and fifty pounds a year—to live on. But one day he came home and said he ’d had a bit of luck on the exchange and mother could go abroad.
“I see!” said Micky.
“That was four years ago!” went on the girl, gaining confidence as she proceeded. “Mother went to Egypt with a trained nurse221
