Look here, son," he said, "this sort of thing makes me nervous."
"It needn't, uncle! Perhaps I shan't be sure again for a long time."
"But what are you going to do with your money?" asked the uncle.
"Of course," said the boy, "I started it for mother. She said she had no luck, because father is unlucky, so I thought if I was lucky, it might stop whispering."
"What might stop whispering?"
"Our house. I hate our house for whispering."
"What does it whisper?"
"Why - why" - the boy fidgeted - "why, I don't know. But it's always short of money, you know, uncle."
"I know it, son, I know it."
"You know people send mother writs, don't you, uncle?"
"I'm afraid I do," said the uncle.
"And then the house whispers, like people laughing at you behind your back. It's awful, that is! I thought if I was lucky -"
"You might stop it," added the uncle.
The boy watched him with big blue eyes, that had an uncanny cold fire in them, and he said never a word.
"Well, then!" said the uncle. "What are we doing?"
"I shouldn't like mother to know I was lucky," said the boy.
"Why not, son?"
"She'd stop me."
"I don't think she would."
"Oh!" - and the boy writhed in an odd way - "I don't want her to know, uncle."
"All right, son! We'll manage it without her knowing."
They managed it very easily. Paul, at the other's suggestion, handed over five thousand pounds to his uncle, who deposited it with the family lawyer, who was then to inform Paul's mother that a relative had put five thousand pounds into his hands, which sum was to be paid out a thousand pounds at a time, on the mother's birthday, for the next five years.
"So she'll have a birthday present of a thousand pounds for five successive years," said Uncle Oscar. "I hope it won't make it all the harder for her later.