Then, feeling a little better, he sat down to think
the whole matter over. His meditations brought a certain amount of
balm. After all, he felt, the thing could quite easily be kept a
secret. He would receive the check in due course, as stated, and he
would bicycle over to the neighboring town of Lexingham and start a
bank-account with it. Nobody would know, and life would go on as
before.
He went to bed, and slept peacefully.
* * * * *
It was about a week after this that he was roused out of a deep sleep
at eight o'clock in the morning to find his room full of Coppins. Mr.
Coppin was there in a nightshirt and his official trousers. Mrs. Coppin
was there, weeping softly in a brown dressing-gown. Modesty had
apparently kept Muriel from the gathering, but brothers Frank and Percy
stood at his bedside, shaking him by the shoulders and shouting. Mr.
Coppin thrust a newspaper at him, as he sat up blinking.
These epic moments are best related swiftly. Roland took the paper, and
the first thing that met his sleepy eye and effectually drove the sleep
from it was this head-line:
ROMANCE OF THE CALCUTTA SWEEPSTAKES
And beneath it another in type almost as large as the first:
POOR CLERK WINS ?40,000
His own name leaped at him from the printed page, and with it that of
the faithful Gelatine.
Pages:
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25