Page:Edgar Jepson--the four philanthropists.djvu/130

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THE FOUR PHILANTHROPISTS

thanking me for a piece of work which took up the odd hours of less than a fortnight. Drop it."

"I won't, if you don't like it," she said, almost humbly.

We got to the discussion of the spending of the money, the renting of the house next door, the cost of fitting it up, of the extra nurses and doctor. She thought that the money would run to thirty cots for two years. She is so sanguine. On the other hand, I knew that not ten pounds of it would be wasted.

When we had worked it out, she said: "And now you'd like to come round the wards."

"I won't!" I said firmly. "I've been over them once, and mine is the kind of mind that sort of thing sticks in. I don't need to. I shall do my best without seeing those wards again."

With that I took my leave, and caught a train back to town.

The next day we made out our list of heirs, and it contained seventeen names, after we had crossed out of it all whom it was hopeless to reckon possible contributors to the cause of Humanity. Angel. and I took up our pleasant joint life with a new sense of its permanence; and I am bound to confess that I was idler by far than either Chelubai or Bottiger in throwing myself in the way of heirs of my acquaintance, and sounding them as to the virtues, or lack of virtues, of those