The Far Country by Nevil Shute

“Bring that thing.”
    The girl was puzzled. “What thing is it?” And then she got up and fetched the draft from the dressing-table, and said, “This?”
    Her grandmother nodded weakly and took it from her and looked round, questing, till Jennifer divined what it was that she wanted, and gave her her spectacles. She put them on, and then she said distinctly, “Such a funny sort of cheque. I never saw one like it.” And then she endorsed it on the back with a hand that trembled, with a signature that was barely legible.
    Jennifer held the cup to her lips, and she drank a little more. Then, with a sudden spurt of energy, she took the cheque-book and wrote quite a legible cheque for four hundred pounds, payable to Jennifer Morton.
    The girl, looking on as she wrote, said, “Granny, you mustn’t do that. I don’t want it”, and you’ll need the money when you get well.”
    The old lady whispered, “I want you to do something for me, Jenny. Write letters now, send this to my bank and this to yours. Then go and post them.”
    “I’ll do that in the morning, Granny. I can’t leave you alone tonight.”
    The old lady gathered her ebbing strength, and said, “Go and write them now, my dear, and bring them up and show me. And then go out and post them.”
    “All right.” She could not disobey so positive and direct a command. She thought as she wrote the letters at her grandmother’s bureau in the drawing-room that she could sort the matter out with her father next day and pay the money back; the thing now was to ease the old lady’s passing and not disobey her. She brought the letters and the envelopes up to the bedside and showed them; the old lady did not speak, but watched her as she put the letters and the cheques into the envelopes and sealed them down. The girl said, “There they are, Granny, all ready to post. May I post them in the morning?”
    The head shook slightly, and the old lips said, “Now.”
    “All right. I expect I’ll be away about ten minutes, Granny; I’ll have to go down to the Broadway. I’ll be back as quick as ever I can.”
    The old head nodded slightly, and the girl went down and put her coat on, and ran most of the way to the post office and most of theway back. She came back into the bedroom flushed and breathing quickly, but her grandmother’s eyes were closed, and she seemed to be asleep.
    The girl went down to the kitchen and made herself a cup of tea, and ate a little meal of toast and jam. Then she went back to the bedroom and settled down in the chair before the electric stove.
    At about half-past twelve the old lady opened her eyes and said, “Jenny, did you post the letters?”
    “I posted them, Granny.”
    “There’s a dear girl,” the voice from the bed said weakly. “I’ve been so worried for you, but you’ll be all right with Jane.”
    The girl blinked in surprise, but there were more important things to be done than to ask for explanations. “Don’t try to talk,” she said. “Let me get some more hot water in these bottles.”
    Her grandmother said, “No. Jenny … Jenny …”
    The girl paused in the act of taking the bottles from the bed. “What is it, Granny?”
    The old lady said something that the girl could not catch. And then she said, “It’s not as if we were extravagant, Geoffrey and I. It’s been a change that nobody could fight against, this going down and down. I’ve had such terrible thoughts for you, Jenny, that it would go on going down and down, and when you are as old as I am you would look back at your room at Blackheath and your office work, as I look back to my life at Steep Manor, and you’ll think how very rich you were when you were young.”
    It did not make sense to the girl. She said, “I’m just going to take these bottles down and fill them, Granny. I’ll be back in a few minutes.”
    Her grandmother said, “I always took a hot-water bottle with me when we went out on shikar. Geoffrey’s bearer, dear old Moung