Does it mean so much to you to be free of poor Mr. Kendall and his care?
I am sure you could not have a guardian more kind.
What plan, anyway, do you intend to make for the day itself?”
“No plan at all,” I answered, “except that you have to remember what you said to me the other day.
The celebrator of a birthday must be granted every wish.”
“Only up to the age of ten years old,” she said, “never afterwards.”
“That is not fair,” I said; “you made no stipulation about age.”
“If we are to picnic by the sea, or sail a boat,” she told me, “I will not come with you.
It is too early in the year to sit upon a beach, and as for climbing in a boat, I know even less about that than I do about a horse.
You must take Louise instead.”
“I will not take Louise,” I said, “and we will go nowhere not fitting to your dignity.”
In point of fact, I had not thought about the events of the day itself, I only planned that she should have the document upon her breakfast tray, and the rest I would leave to chance.
When the day of the thirty-first of March came, however, I knew that there was something else I wished to do.
I remembered the jewels in the bank, and thought what a fool I was not to have recollected them before.
So I had two encounters before me, on that day.
One with Mr. Couch, and the other with my godfather.
I made certain first of Mr. Couch.
I thought the packages might be too bulky to carry upon Gypsy, and I did not wish to order the carriage for fear Rachel might hear of it and express a desire to come into town upon some errand.
Besides, it was an unusual thing for me to do, to go anywhere by carriage.
So on some unnecessary pretext I walked into town, and had the groom fetch me in the dogcart.
As ill-luck had it, the whole neighborhood appeared to be on shopping bent upon that morning, and as a person must either dodge into a doorway or fall into the harbor if he wishes to avoid his neighbor in our port, I was forever skulking behind corners so that I might not come face to face with Mrs. Pascoe and her brood of daughters.
My very furtiveness must have drawn all eyes upon me, and word gone about the place that Mr. Ashley was behaving in singular fashion, running in one door of the fishmarket and out the other, and bobbing into the Rose and Crown before eleven in the morning, just as the vicar’s lady from the neighboring parish came walking down the street.
No doubt it would be spread abroad that Mr. Ashley drank.
I got myself inside sanctuary at last, within the safe walls of the bank.
Mr. Couch received me as pleasantly as he had done before.
“This time,” I told him, “I have come to take all away.”
He looked at me in pained surprise.
“You are not, Mr. Ashley,” he said, “intending to remove your banking account to another establishment?”
“No,” I said,
“I was speaking about the family jewels.
Tomorrow I shall be twenty-five, and they become my legal property.
I wish to have them in my custody when I awake upon my birthday.”
He must have thought me an eccentric, or at best a little odd.
“You mean,” he answered, “you wish to indulge yourself in a whim for the day only? You did something of the sort, did you not, on Christmas Eve.
Mr. Kendall, your guardian, brought the collar back immediately.”
“Not a whim, Mr. Couch,” I said.
“I want the jewels at home, in my possession.
I do not know how I can make it still more clear.”
“I understand,” he said.
“Well, I trust that you have a safe in the house, or at least some place of security where you can keep them.”
“That, Mr. Couch,” I said, “is really my affair.
I would be much obliged if you would fetch the jewels right away.
Not only the collar this time.
The whole collection.”
I might have been robbing him of his own possessions.
“Very good,” he said reluctantly, “it will take a little time to fetch them from the vaults, and wrap them with even greater care.
If you have any other business in the town…”
“I have none,” I interrupted.
“I will wait here, and take them with me.”
He saw there was no use in delay and, sending word to his clerk, instructed the packages to be brought.