“She’s a very nice girl,” opined Wallingford.
“Yes,” agreed Bob. “She’s getting a little old,though. She was twenty her last birthday. She’ll be an old maid pretty soon, but it’s her own fault.”
Then Bob went after more water, and Wallingford, seating himself at the table with paper and pencil, plunged into a succession of rambling figures concerning Jonas Bubble’s black swamp; and he figured and puzzled far into the night, with the piquant face of Miss Fannie drifting here and there among the figures.
The next morning Wallingford requisitioned the services of Bob and the little sorrel team again, and drove out to Jonas Bubble’s swamp. Arrived there he climbed the fence, and, taking a sliver of fence rail with him, gravely prodded into the edge of the swamp in various places, hauling it up in each case dripping with viscid black mud, which he examined with the most minute care, dropping tiny drops upon the backs of clean cards and spreading them out smoothly with the tip of his finger, while he looked up into the sky inquiringly, not one gesture of his conduct lost upon the curious Bob.
When he climbed back into the buggy, Bob, finding it impossible longer to restrain his quivering curiosity, asked him:
“What’s it good for?”
“I can’t tell you just yet,” said Wallingford kindly, “but if it is what I think it is, Bob, I’vemade a great discovery, one that I am sure will not only increase my wealth but add greatly to the riches of Blakeville. Do you know where I could find Jonas Bubble at this hour?”
“Down at the mill, sure.”
“Drive down there.”
As they drove past Jonas Bubble’s house they saw Miss Fannie on the back porch, in an old wrapper, peeling potatoes, and heard the sharp voice of the second Mrs. Bubble scolding her.
“Say,” said Bob, “if that old rip was my stepmother I’d poke her head-first into that swamp back yonder.”
Wallingford shook his head.
“She’d turn it black,” he gravely objected.
“Why, it is black,” protested Bob, opening his eyes in bewilderment.
In reply to this Wallingford merely chuckled. Bob, regarding him in perplexity for a while, suddenly saw that this was a joke, and on the way to the mill he snickered a score of times. Queer chap, this Wallingford; rich, no doubt, and smart as a whip; and something mysterious about him, too!
Wallingford found Jonas Bubble in flour-sifted garments in his office, going over a dusty file of bills.
“Mr. Bubble,” said he, “I have been down to your swamp and have investigated its possibilities. I am now prepared, since I have secured the right to purchase this land, to confide to you the business search in which I have for some time been engaged, and which now, I hope, is concluded. Do you know, Mr. Bubble, the valuable deposit I think I have found in my swamp?”
“No!” ejaculated Bubble, stricken solemn by the confidential tone. “What is it?”
Wallingford took a long breath, swelling out his already broad chest, and, leaning over most impressively, tapped his compelling finger upon Jonas Bubble’s knee. Then said he, with almost tragic earnestness:
“Black Mud!”
Jonas Bubble drew back astounded, eying Wallingford with affrighted incredulity. He had thought this young man sane.
“Black—” he gasped; “black—” and then hesitated.
“Mud!” finished Wallingford for him, more impressively than before. “High and low, far and near, Mr. Bubble, I have searched for a deposit of this sort. Wherever there was a swamp I have been,but never until I came to Blakeville did I find what I believe to be the correct quality of black mud.”
“Black mud,” repeated Jonas Bubble meaninglessly, but awed in spite of himself.
“Etruscanblack mud,” corrected Wallingford. “The same rare earth out of which the world famous Etruscan pottery is manufactured in the little village of Etrusca, near Milan, Italy. The smallest objects of this beautiful jet-black pottery retail in this country from ten dollars upward. With your permission I am going to express some samples of this deposit to the world-famous pottery designer, Signor Vittoreo Matteo, formerly in charge of the Etruscan Pottery, but who is now in Boston waiting with feverish impatience for me to find a suitable deposit of this rare black mud. If I have at last found it, Mr. Bubble, I wish to congratulate you and Blakeville, as well as myself, upon the acquisition of an enterprise which will not only reflect vast credit on your charming and progressive little town, but will bring it a splendid accession of wealth.”
Mr. Bubble rose from his chair and shook hands with young Wallingford in great, though pompous, emotion.
“My son,” said he, “go right ahead. Take allof it you want—that is,” he hastily corrected himself, “all you need for experimental purposes.” For, he reflected, there was no need to waste any of the rare and valuable Etruscan black mud. “I think I’ll go with you.”
“I’d be pleased to have you,” said Wallingford, as, indeed, he was.
On the way, Wallingford stopped at Hen Moozer’s General Merchandise Emporium and Post-Office, where he bought a large tin pail with a tight cover, a small tin pail and a long-handled garden trowel which he bent at right angles; and seven people walked off of Hen Moozer’s porch into the middle of the street to see the town magnate and the resplendent stranger, driven by the elated Bob Ranger, whirl down Maple Street toward Jonas Bubble’s swamp.
Arrived there, who so active in direction as Jonas Bubble?
“Bob,” he ordered, protruding his girth at least three inches beyond its normal position, “hitch those horses and jump over in the field here with us. Mr. Wallingford, you will want this sample from somewhere near the center of the swamp. Bob, back yonder beyond that clump of bushes you will findthat old flatboat we had right after the big rainy season. Hunt around down there for a long pole and pole out some place near the middle. Take this shovel and dig down and get mud enough to fill these two buckets.”
Bob stood unimpressed. It was not an attractive task.
“And Bob,” added Wallingford mildly, “here’s a dollar, and I know where there’s another.”
“Sure,” said Bob with the greatest of alacrity, and he hurried back to where the old flatboat, water-soaked and nearly as black as the swamp upon which it rested, was half submerged beyond the clump of bushes. When, after infinite labor, he had pushed that clumsy craft afloat upon the bosom of the shallow swamp, Mr. Bubble was on the spot with infinite direction. He told Bob, shouting from the shore, just where to proceed and how, down to the handling of each trowelful of dripping mud, and even to the emptying of each small pailful into the large pail.
“I don’t know exactly how I’ll get this boxed for shipping,” hinted Wallingford, as Bob carried the pail laboriously back to the buggy.
“Right down at the mill,” invited Mr. Bubble withgreat cordiality. “I’ll have my people look after it for you.”
“That’s very kind of you,” replied Wallingford. “I’ll give you the address,” and upon the back of one of his own cards he wrote: Sig. Vittoreo Matteo, 710 Marabon Building, Boston, Mass., U. S. A., care Horace G. Daw.
That night he wrote a careful letter of explanation to Horace G. Daw.
Two weeks to wait. Oh, well, Wallingford could amuse himself by working up a local reputation. It was while he was considering this, upon the following day, that a farmer with three teeth drove up in a dilapidated spring-wagon drawn by a pair of beautiful bay horses, and stopped in front of Jim Ranger’s livery and sales stable to talk hay. Wallingford, sitting in front of the hotel in lazy meditation, walked over and examined the team with a critical eye. They were an exquisite match, perfect in every limb, with manes and tails and coats of that peculiar silken sheen belonging to perfect health and perfect care.
“Very nice team you have,” observed Wallingford.
“Finest match team anywhere,” agreed AbnerFollis, plucking at his gray goatee and mouthing a straw, “an’ I make a business o’ raisin’ thoroughbreds. Cousins, they are, an’ without a blemish on ’em. An’ trot—you’d ought to see that team trot.”
“What’ll you take for them?” asked Wallingford.
The response of Abner Follis was quick and to the point. He kept a careful appraisement upon all his live stock.
“Seven hundred and fifty,” said he, naming a price that allowed ample leeway for dickering.
It was almost a disappointment to him that Wallingford produced his wallet, counted over the exact amount that had been asked, and said briefly:
“Unhitch them.”
“Well!” said Abner, slowly taking the money and throwing away his straw in petulance. It was dull and uninteresting to have a bargain concluded so quickly.
Wallingford, however, knew what he was about. Within an hour everybody in town knew of his purchase. Speculation that had been mildly active concerning him now became feverish. He was a rich nabob with money to throw away; had so much money that he would not even dicker in a horse deal—andthis was the height of human recklessness in Blakeville. Wallingford, purchasing Jim Ranger’s new buggy and his best set of harness, drove to the Bubbles’, the eyed of all observers, but before he had opened the gate Mrs. Bubble was on the porch.
“Jonas ain’t at home,” she shrilled down at him.
“Yes, I know,” replied Wallingford; “but I came to see Miss Fannie.”
“She’s busy,” said Mrs. Bubble with forbidding loftiness. “She’s in the kitchen getting dinner.”
Wallingford, however, strode quite confidently up the walk, and by the time he reached the porch Miss Fannie was in the door, removing her apron.
“What a pretty turnout!” she exclaimed.
“It’s a beauty,” agreed Wallingford. “I just bought it from Abner Follis.”
She smiled.
“I bet he beat you in the bargain.”
“So long as I’m satisfied,” retorted Wallingford, smiling back at her, “I don’t see why we shouldn’t all be happy. Come on and take the first ride in it.”
She glanced at her stepmother dubiously.
“I’m very busy,” she replied; “and I’d have to change my dress.”
“You look good enough just as you are,” he insisted.“Come right on. Mrs. Bubble can finish the dinner. I’ll bet she’s a better cook, anyhow,” and he laughed cordially.
The remark was intended as a compliment, but Mrs. Bubble took distinct umbrage. This was, without doubt, a premeditated slur. Of course he knew that she had once been Mr. Bubble’s cook!
“Fannie can’t go,” she snapped.
Wallingford walked straight up to Mrs. Bubble, beaming down upon her from his overawing height; and for just one affrighted moment Fannie feared that he intended to uptilt her stepmother’s chin, or make some equally familiar demonstration. Instead, he only laughed down into that lady’s belligerent eyes.
“Yes, she can,” he insisted with large persuasiveness. “You were young once yourself, Mrs. Bubble, and not so very long ago.”
It was not what he said, but his jovial air of secret understanding, that made Mrs. Bubble flush and laugh nervously and soften.
“Oh, I reckon I can get along,” she said.
Miss Fannie, with a wondering glance at Wallingford, had already flown up-stairs, and J. Rufus set himself deliberately to be agreeable to Mrs.Bubble. When Fannie came tripping down again in an incredibly short space of time, having shaken herself out of one frock and into another with an expedition which surprised even herself, she found her stepmother actually giggling! And when the young couple drove away in the bright, shining new rig behind the handsome bays, Mrs. Bubble watched after them with something almost like wistfulness. She had been young herself, once—and not so very long ago!
Opposite the Bubble swamp Wallingford stopped for a moment.
“I hope to be a very near neighbor of yours,” said he, waving his hand out toward the wonderful deposit of genuine Etruscan black mud. “Did your father tell you about the pottery studios which may be built here?”
“Not a thing,” she confessed with a slightly jealous laugh. “Papa never tells us anything at home. We’ll hear it on the street, no doubt, as we usually do.”
“Your father is a most estimable man, but I fear he makes a grave mistake in not telling you about things,” declared Wallingford. “I believe in the value of a woman’s intuition, and if I were asclosely related to you as your father I am sure I should confide all my prospects to you.”
Miss Fannie gave a little inward gasp. That serious tide in the talk, fraught with great possibilities, for which every girl longs and which every girl dreads, was already setting ashore.
“You might get fooled,” she said. “Father don’t think any woman has very much gumption, and least of all me, since—since he married again.”
“I understand,” said Wallingford gently, and drove on. “Just to show you howmuchdifferently I look at things from your father, I’m going to tell you all about the black pottery project and see what you think of it.”
Thereupon he explained to her in minute detail, a wealth of which came to him on the spur of the moment, the exact workings of the Etruscan pottery art. He painted for her, in the gray of stone and the yellow of face brick and the red of tiling, the beautiful studio buildings that were to be erected yonder facing the swamp; he showed her through cozy, cheerfully lighted apartments in those studios, where the best trained artists of Europe, under the direction of the wizard, Vittoreo Matteo, should execute ravishments of Etruscan black pottery; heshowed her, as the bays pranced on, connoisseurs and collectors coming from all over the country to visit the Blakeville studios, and carrying away priceless gems of the ceramic art at incalculable prices!
The girl drank in all these details with thirsty avidity.
“It’s splendid! Perfectly grand!” she assured him with vast enthusiasm, and in her memory was stored every precious word that this genius had said; and they were stored in logical order, ready to reproduce on the slightest provocation, which was precisely the result which Wallingford had intended to produce.
It was nearing noon now, and making adétourby the railway road they drove up in front of the mill with the spanking bays just as Jonas Bubble was coming out of his office to go to dinner. Hilariously they invited him into the carriage, and in state drove him home.
Wallingford very wisely kept away from the Bubble home that afternoon and that evening, and by the next morning every woman in town had told all her men-folk about the vast Etruscan black pottery project!
Wallingford was just going in to dinner when a tall, thin-visaged young lady, who might have been nearing thirty, but insisted on all the airs and graces of twenty, came boldly up to the Atlas Hotel in search of him, and, by her right of being a public character, introduced herself. She was Miss Forsythe, principal over one other teacher in the Blakeville public school; moreover, she was president of the Women’s Culture Club!
“It is about the latter that I came to see you, Mr. Wallingford,” she said, pushing back a curl which had been carefully trained to be wayward. “The Women’s Culture Club meets this coming Saturday afternoon at the residence of Mrs. Moozer. It just happens that we are making an exhaustive study of the Italian Renaissance, and we have nothing,positively nothing, about the renaissance of Italianceramics! I beg of you, Mr. Wallingford, I plead with you, to be our guest upon that afternoon and address us upon Etruscan Pottery.”
Wallingford required but one second to adjust himself to this new phase. This was right where he lived. He could out-pretend anybody who ever made pretensions to having a pretense. He expanded his broad chest and beamed.
He knew but little about art, being only the business man of the projected American Etruscan Black Pottery Studios, but he would be more than pleased to tell them that little. He would, in fact, be charmed!
“You don’t know how kind, how good you are, and what a treat your practical talk will be, I am sure,” gurgled Miss Forsythe, biting first her upper lip and then her lower to make them redder, and then, still gurgling, she swept away, leaving Wallingford chuckling.
Immediately after lunch he went over to the telegraph office and wired to the most exclusive establishment of its sort in New York:
Express three black pottery vases Etruscan preferred but most expensive you have one eighteen inches high and two twelve inches high am wiringfifty dollars to insure transportation send balanceC. O. D.
Express three black pottery vases Etruscan preferred but most expensive you have one eighteen inches high and two twelve inches high am wiringfifty dollars to insure transportation send balanceC. O. D.
Not the least of J. Rufus’ smile was that inserted clause, “Etruscan preferred.” He had not the slightest idea that there was such pottery as Etruscan in the world, but his sage conclusion was that the big firm would think they had overlooked something; and his other clause, “most expensive you have,” would insure proper results. That night he wrote to Blackie Daw:
Whatever you do, don’t buy vase either twelve or eighteen inches high. Send one about nine.
Whatever you do, don’t buy vase either twelve or eighteen inches high. Send one about nine.
Saturday morning the package came, and the excess bill was two hundred and forty-five dollars, exclusive of express charges, all of which J. Rufus cheerfully paid. He had that box delivered unopened to the residence of Mrs. Henry Moozer. That afternoon he dressed himself with consummate care, his gray frock suit and his gray bow tie, his gray waistcoat and his gray spats, by some subtle personality he threw about them, conveying delicately the idea of an ardent art amateur, but anhumble one, because he felt himself insufficiently gifted to take part in actual creation.
Was Miss Forsythe there? Miss Forsythe was there, in her pink silk, with cascade after cascade of ruffled flounces to take away the appalling height and thinness of her figure. Was Mrs. Moozer there? Dimly discernible, yes, backed into a corner and no longer mistress of her own house, though ineffectually trying to assert herself above a determined leadership. Also were there Mrs. Ranger, who was trying hard to learn to dote; Mrs. Priestly, who prided herself on a marked resemblance to Madame Melba, and had a high C which shattered chandeliers; and Mrs. Hispin, whose troublesome mustache in nowise interfered with her mad passion for the collection of antiques, which, fortunately consisting of early chromos, could be purchased cheaply in the vicinity of Blakeville; and Mrs. Bubble, whose specialty was the avoidance of all subjects connected with domestic science. Many other equally earnest and cultured ladies flocked about J. Rufus, as bees around a buckwheat blossom, until the capable and masterly president, by a careful accident arranging her skirts so that one inch of silken hose was visible, tapped her little silver gavel for order.
There ensued the regular reports of committees, ponderous and grave in their frivolity; there ensued unfinished business—relating to a disputed sum of thirty-nine cents; there ensued new business—relating to a disputed flaw in the constitution; there ensued a discussion of scarcely repressed acidity upon the right of the president to interfere in committee work; and then the gurgling president—with many a reference to the great masters in Italian art, with a wide digression into the fields of ceramics in general and of Italian ceramics in particular, with a complete history of the plastic arts back to the ooze stage of geological formation—introduced the speaker of the day.
J. Rufus, accepting gracefully his prominence, bowed extravagantly three times in response to the Chautauqua salute, and addressed those nineteen assembled ladies with a charming earnestness which did vast credit to himself and to the Italian ceramic renaissance. He invented for them on the spot a history of Etruscan pottery, a process of making it, a discovery of the wonderful Etruscan under-glaze, and the eye-moistening struggles and triumphs of the great Vittoreo Matteo from obscurity as a poor little barefooted Italian shepherd boy who wascaught constructing wonderful figures out of plain mud.
He regretted very much that he had been unable to secure, at such short notice, samples of the famous Etruscan pottery which this same Vittoreo Matteo had made famous, but he had secured the next best thing, and with renewed apologies to Mrs. Moozer, who had kindly consented to have a litter made upon her carpet, he would unpack the vases which had come that morning. With a fine eye for stage effect, Wallingford had had the covers of the boxes loosened, but had not had the excelsior removed. Now he had the box brought in and placed it upon the table, and then, from amid their careful wrappings, the precious vases were lifted!
“Ah!”—“Howex-quisite!”—“Bee-yewtiful!” Such was the chorus of the enraptured culture club.
Wallingford, smiling in calm triumph, was able to assure the almost fainting worshipers that these were but feeble substitutes for the exquisite creations that were shortly to be turned out in the studios that were to make Blakeville famous. Yes, he might now promise them that definitely! The matter was no longer one of conjecture. That very morning he had received an epoch-making letterfrom the great Vittoreo Matteo! This letter he read. It fairly exuded with tears—warm, emotional, Latin tears of joy—over the discovery of this priceless, this glorious, this beatific black mud! Already the great Vittoreo was at work upon the sample sent him, modeling a vase after one of his own famous shapes of Etrusca. It would soon be completed, he would have it fired, and then he would send it to his dear friend and successful manager, so that he might himself judge how inexpressibly more than perfect was the wonderful mud of Blakeville.
“How ex-quisite!”—“Bee-yewtiful!” chorused the culture club“Howex-quisite!”—“Bee-yewtiful!” chorused the culture club
Mr. Wallingford was himself transported to nearly as ecstatic heights over the prospect as the redoubtable Vittoreo Matteo, and as a memento of this auspicious day he begged to present the largest of these vases to the Women’s Culture Club, to be in the keeping of its charming president. One of the smaller vases he begged to present to the hostess of the afternoon in token of the delightful hour he had spent in that house. The other he retained to present to a very gracious matron, the hospitality of whose home he had already enjoyed, and with whose eminent husband he had already held the most pleasant business relations; whereat Mrs. Jonas Bubblefairly wriggled lest her confusion might not be seen or correctly interpreted.
Close upon the frantic applause which followed these graceful gifts, pale tea and pink wafers were served by the Misses Priestly, Hispin, Moozer and Bubble, and the function was over except for the fluttering. Inadvertently, almost apparently quite inadvertently, when he went away, J. Rufus left behind him the crumpledC. O. D.bill which he had held in his hand while talking. That night Blakeville, from center to circumference, was talking of nothing but the prices of Etruscan vases. Why, these prices were not only stupendous, they were impossible—and yet there was the receipted bill! To think that anybody would pay real money in such enormous dole for mere earthen vases! It was preposterous; it was incredible—and yet there was the bill! Visions of wealth never before grasped by the minds of the citizens of Blakeville began to loom in the immediate horizon of every man, woman and child, and over all these visions of wealth hovered the beneficent figure of J. Rufus Wallingford.
On Sunday J. Rufus, in solemn black frock-coat and shiny top hat, attended church. From church hewent to the Bubble home, by the warm invitation of Jonas, for chicken dinner, and in the afternoon he took Miss Fannie driving behind the handsome bays. While she was making ready, however, he took Jonas Bubble in the rig and drove down to the swamp, where they paused in solemn, sober contemplation of that vast and beautiful expanse of Etruscan black mud. Mr. Bubble had, of course, seen the glowing letter of Vittoreo Matteo shortly after its arrival, and he was not unprepared for J. Rufus’ urgency.
“To-morrow,” said J. Rufus, as he swept his hand out over the swamp with pride of possession, “to-morrow I shall exercise my option; to-morrow I shall begin drainage operations; to-morrow I shall order plans prepared for the first wing of the Blakeville Etruscan Studios,” and he pointed out a spot facing the Bubble mansion. “Only one thing worries me. In view of the fact that we shall have a large pay-roll and handle considerable of ready cash, I regret that Blakeville has no bank. Moreover, it grates upon me that the thriving little city of my adoption must depend on a smaller town for all its banking facilities. Why don’t you start a bank, Mr. Bubble, and become its president? If you will starta subscription list to-morrow I’ll take five thousand dollars’ worth of stock myself.”
To become the president of a bank! That was an idea which had not previously presented itself to the pompous Mr. Bubble, but now that it had arrived it made his waistband uncomfortable. Well, the town needed a bank, and a bank was always profitable. His plain civic duty lay before him. President Bubble, of the Blakeville Bank; or, much better still, the Bubble Bank! Why not? He was already the most important man in the community, and his name carried the most weight. President Bubble, of the Bubble Bank! By George! It was a good idea!
Meanwhile, a clean, clear deed and title to forty acres of Jonas Bubble’s black mud was recorded in the Blake County court-house, and J. Rufus went to the city, returning with a discreet engineer, who surveyed and prodded and waded, and finally installed filtration boxes and a pumping engine; and all Blakeville came down to watch in solemn silence the monotonous jerks of the piston which lifted water from the swamp faster than it flowed in. For hours they stood, first on one foot and then on the other, watching the whir of the shining fly-wheel, the exhaust of the steam, the smoke of the stack, and thegushing of the black water through the big rubber nozzle to the stream which had heretofore merely trickled beneath the rickety wooden road culvert. It watched in awed silence the slow recession of waters, the appearance of unexpected little lakes and islands and slimy streams in the shining black bottom of that swamp.
On the very day, too, that this work was installed, there came from Vittoreo Matteo, in Boston, the Etruscan vase. Wallingford, opening it in the privacy of his own room, was intensely relieved to find that Blackie had bought one of entirely different shape and style of decoration from those he had already shown, and he sent it immediately to the house of Mrs. Hispin, where that week’s meeting of the Women’s Culture Club was being held. He followed it with his own impressive self to show them the difference between the high-grade Etruscan ware and the inferior ware he had previously exhibited. He placed the two pieces side by side for comparison. Though they had been made by the same factory, the ladies of the Women’s Culture Club one and all could see the enormous difference in the exquisiteness of the under-glaze. The Etruscan ware was infinitely superior, and just think! this beautifulvase was made from Blakeville’s own superior article of black mud!
Up in Hen Moozer’s General Merchandise Emporium and Post-Office Wallingford arranged for a show window, and from behind its dusty panes he had the eternal pyramid of fly-specked canned goods removed. In its place he constructed a semi-circular amphitheater of pale blue velvet, bought from Moozer’s own stock, and in its center he placed the priceless bit of Etruscan ware, the first splendid art object from the to-be-famous Blakeville Etruscan studios!
In the meantime, Jonas Bubble had found willing subscribers to the stock of the Bubble Bank, and already was installing an impregnable vault in his vacant brick building at the intersection of Maple Avenue and Blake Street. By this time every citizen had a new impulse of civic pride, and vast commercial expansion was planned by every business man in Blakeville. Even the women felt the contagion, and it was one of the sorrows of Miss Forsythe’s soul that her vacation arrangements had already been made for the summer, and that she should be compelled to go away even for a short time, leaving all this inspiriting progress behind her. It would bejust like Mrs. Moozer to take advantage of the situation! Mrs. Moozer was vice-president of the Women’s Culture Club.
The Bubble County Bank collected its funds, took possession of its new quarters and made ready for business. Jonas Bubble, changing his attire to a frock suit for good and all, became its president. J. Rufus had also been offered an office in the bank, but he declined. A directorship had been urged upon him, but he steadfastly refused, with the same firmness that he had denied to Jonas Bubble a share in his pottery or even his drainage project. No, with his five thousand dollars’ worth of stock he felt that he was taking as great a share as a stranger might, with modesty, appropriate to himself in their municipal advancement. Let the honors go to those who had grown up with the city, and who had furnished the substantial nucleus upon which their prosperity and advancement might be based.
He intended, however, to make free use of the new banking facilities, and by way of showing the earnestness of that intention he drew from his New York bank half of the sum he had cleared on his big horse-racing “frame up,” and deposited these funds in the Bubble Bank. True enough, three daysafter, he withdrew nearly the entire amount by draft in favor of one Horace G. Daw, of Boston, but a week later he deposited a similar amount from his New York bank, then increased that with the amount previously withdrawn in favor of Horace G. Daw. A few days later he withdrew the entire account, replaced three-fourths of it and drew out one-half of that, and it began to be talked about all over the town that Wallingford’s enterprises were by no means confined to his Blakeville investments. He was a man of large financial affairs, which required the frequent transfer of immense sums of money. To keep up this rapid rotation of funds, Wallingford even borrowed money which Blackie Daw had obtained in the same horse-racing enterprise. Sometimes he had seventy-five thousand dollars in the Bubble Bank, and sometimes his balance was less than a thousand.
In the meantime, J. Rufus allowed no opportunities for his reputation to become stale. In the Atlas Hotel he built a model bath-room which was to revert to Jim Ranger, without money and without price, when Wallingford should leave, and over his bath-tub he installed an instantaneous heater which was the pride and delight of the village. It cost hima pretty penny, but he got tenfold advertising from it. By the time this sensation had begun to die he was able to display drawings of the quaint and pretty vine-clad Etruscan studio, and to start men to digging trenches for the foundations!
One day a tall, slender, black-haired, black-mustached and black-eyed young man, in a severely ministerial black frock suit, dropped off the train and inquired in an undoubted foreign accent for the Atlas Hotel. Even the station loungers recognized him at once as the great and long-expected artist, Signor Vittoreo Matteo, who, save in the one respect of short hair, was thoroughly satisfying to the eye and imagination. Even before the spreading of his name upon the register of the Atlas Hotel, all Blakeville knew that he had arrived.
In the hotel office he met J. Rufus. Instantly he shrieked for joy, embraced Wallingford, kissed that discomfited gentleman upon both cheeks and fell upon his neck, jabbering in most broken English his joy at meeting his dear, dear friend once more. In the privacy of Wallingford’s own room, Wallingford’sdear Italian friend threw himself upon the bed and kicked up his heels like a boy, stuffing the corner of a pillow in his mouth to suppress his shrieks of laughter.
“Ain’t I the regular buya-da-banan Dago for fair?” he demanded, without a trace of his choice Italian accent.
“Blackie,” rejoiced Wallingford, wiping his eyes, “I never met your parents, but I’ve a bet down that they came from Naples as ballast in a cattle steamer. But I’m afraid you’ll strain yourself on this. Don’t make it too strong.”
“I’ll make Salvini’s acting as tame as a jointed crockery doll,” asserted Blackie. “This deal is nuts and raisins to me; and say, J. Rufus, your sending for me was just in the nick of time. Just got a tip from a post-office friend that the federal officers were going to investigate my plant, so I’m glad to have a vacation. What’s this new stunt of yours, anyhow?”
“It’s a cinch,” declared Wallingford, “but I don’t want to scramble your mind with anything but the story of your own life.”
To his own romantic, personal history, as Vittoreo Matteo, and to the interesting fabrications about theworld-famous Etruscan pottery, in the village of Etrusca, near Milan, Italy, Blackie listened most attentively.
“All right,” said he at the finish; “I get you. Now lead me forth to the merry, merry villagers.”
Behind the spanking bays which had made Fannie Bubble the envied of every girl in Blakeville, Wallingford drove Blackie forth. Already many of the faithful had gathered at the site of the Blakeville Etruscan Studios in anticipation of the great Matteo’s coming, and when the tall, black-eyed Italian jumped out of the buggy they fairly quivered with gratified curiosity. How well he looked the part! If only he had had long hair! The eyes of the world-famous Italian ceramic expert, however, were not for the assembled denizens of Blakeville; they were only for that long and eagerly desired deposit of Etruscan soil. He leaped from the buggy; he dashed through the gap in the fence; he rushed to the side of that black swamp, the edges of which had evaporated now until they were but a sticky mass, and said:
“Oh, da g-r-r-a-a-n-da mod!”
Forthwith, disregarding his cuffs, disregarding his rings, disregarding everything, he plunged bothhis white hands into that sticky mass and brought them up dripping-full of that precious material—the genuine, no, better than genuine, Etruscan black mud!
A cheer broke out from assembled Blakeville. This surely was artistic frenzy! This surely was the emotional temperament! This surely was the manner in which the great Italian black-pottery expertshouldact in the first sight of his beloved black mud!
“Da gr-r-r-r-r-a-a-n-da mod!” he repeated over and over, and drew it close to his face that he might inspect it with a near and loving eye.
One might almost have thought that he was about to kiss it, to bury his nose in it; one almost expected him to jump into that pond and wallow in it, his joy at seeing it was so complete.
It was J. Rufus Wallingford himself who, catching the contagion of this superb fervor, ran to the pail of drinking-water kept for the foundation workmen, and brought it to the great artist. J. Rufus himself poured water upon the great artist’s hands until those hands were free of their Etruscan coating, and with his own immaculate handkerchief he dried those deft and skilful fingers, while the greatItalian potter looked up into the face of his business manager with almost tears in his eyes!
It was a wonderful scene, one never to be forgotten, and in the enthusiasm of that psychological moment Mrs. Moozer rushed forward. Mrs. Moozer, acting president of the Women’s Culture Club in the absence of Miss Forsythe, saw here a glorious opportunity; here was where she could “put one over” upon that all-absorptive young lady.
“My dear Mr. Wallingford, you must introduce me at once!” she exclaimed. “I can not any longer restrain my impatience.”
His own voice quavering emotions of several sorts, Wallingford introduced them, and Mrs. Moozer shook ecstatically the hand which had just caressed the dear swamp.
“And so this is the great Matteo!” she exclaimed. “Signor, as acting president of the Women’s Culture Club, I claim you for an address upon your sublime art next Saturday afternoon. Let business claim you afterward.”
“I hav’a—not da gooda Englis,” said Blackie Daw, with an indescribable gesture of the shoulders and right arm, “but whata leetle I cana say, I s’alla be amost aglad to tella da ladees.”
Never did man enjoy himself more than did Blackie Daw. Blakeville went wild over this gifted, warmly temperamental foreigner. They dined him and they listened to his soul-satisfying, broken English with vast respect, even with veneration; the women because he was an artist, and the men because he represented vast money-earning capacity. Even the far-away president of the Women’s Culture Club heard of his advent from a faithful adherent, an anti-Moozer and pro-Forsythe member, and on Saturday morning J. Rufus Wallingford received a gushing letter from that enterprising lady.
My Dear Mr. Wallingford:I have been informed that the great event has happened, and that the superb artist has at last arrived in Blakeville; moreover, that he is to favor the Women’s Culture Club, of which I have the honor to be president, with a talk upon his delightful art. I simply can not resist presiding at that meeting, and I hope it is not uncharitable toward Mrs. Moozer that I feel it my duty to do so; consequently I shall arrive in time, I trust, to introduce him; moreover, to talk with him in his own, limpid, liquid language. I have been, for the past month, taking phonograph lessons in Italian for this moment, and I trust that it will be a pleasant surprise to him to be addressed in his native tongue.
My Dear Mr. Wallingford:
I have been informed that the great event has happened, and that the superb artist has at last arrived in Blakeville; moreover, that he is to favor the Women’s Culture Club, of which I have the honor to be president, with a talk upon his delightful art. I simply can not resist presiding at that meeting, and I hope it is not uncharitable toward Mrs. Moozer that I feel it my duty to do so; consequently I shall arrive in time, I trust, to introduce him; moreover, to talk with him in his own, limpid, liquid language. I have been, for the past month, taking phonograph lessons in Italian for this moment, and I trust that it will be a pleasant surprise to him to be addressed in his native tongue.
Wallingford rushed up-stairs to where Blackie was leisurely getting ready for breakfast.
“Old scout,” he gasped, “your poor old mother in Italy is at the point of death, so be grief-stricken and hustle! Get ready for the next train out of town, you hear? Look at this!” and he thrust in front of Blackie’s eyes the fatal letter.
Blackie looked at it and comprehended its significance.
“What time does the first train leave?” he asked.
“I don’t know, but whatever time it is I’ll get you down to it,” said Wallingford. “This is warning enough for me. It’s time to close up and take my profits.”
The next east-bound train found Blackie Daw and Wallingford at the station, and just as it slowed down, Blackie, with Wallingford helping him carry his grips, was at the steps of the parlor car. He stood aside for the stream of descending passengers to step down, and had turned to address some remark to Wallingford, when he saw that gentleman’s face blanch and his jaw drop. A second later a gauzy female had descended from the car and seized upon J. Rufus. Even as she turned upon him,Blackie felt the sinking certainty that this was Miss Forsythe.
“And this is Signor Matteo, I am sure,” she gushed. “You’renotgoing away!”
“Yes,” interposed Wallingford, “his grandmother—I mean his mother—in Genoa is at the point of death, and he must make a hasty trip. He will return again in a month.”
“Oh, it is too bad, too bad indeed!” she exclaimed. “I sympathize with you,sodeeply, Signor Matteo. Signor,...”
The dreaded moment had come, and Wallingford braced himself as Miss Forsythe, cocking her head upon one side archly, like a dear little bird, gurgled out one of her very choicest bits of phonograph Italian!
Blackie Daw never batted an eyelash. He beamed upon Miss Forsythe, he displayed his dazzling white teeth in a smile of intense gratification, he grasped Miss Forsythe’s two hands in the fervor of his enthusiasm—and, with every appearance of lively intelligence beaming from his eyes, he fired at Miss Forsythe a tumultuous stream of utterly unintelligible gibberish!
As his flow continued, to the rhythm of an occasional,warm, double handshake, Miss Forsythe’s face turned pink and then red, and when at last, upon the conductor’s signal, Blackie hastily tore himself away and clambered on board, waving his hand to the last and erupting strange syllables which had no kith or kin, Miss Forsythe turned to Wallingford, nearly crying.
“It is humiliating; it issohumiliating,” she admitted, trapped into confession by the suddenness of it all; “but, after all my weeks of preparation, I wasn’t able to understand one word of that beautiful, limpid Italian!”
Wallingford had kept his finger carefully upon the pulse of the Bubble Bank by apparently inconsequential conversations with President Bubble, and he knew its deposits and its surplus almost to the dollar. Twice now he had checked out his entire account and borrowed nearly the face of his bank stock, on short time, against his mere note of hand, replacing the amounts quickly and at the same time depositing large sums, which he almost immediately checked out again.
On the Saturday following Blackie Daw’s departure all points had been brought together: the drainage operation had been completed; walls had been built about the three springs which supplied the swamp; the foundation of the studio had been completed, and all his workmen paid off and discharged; and the surplus of the Bubble Bank had reached approximately its high-water mark.
On Sunday Wallingford, taking dinner with the Bubbles, unrolled a set of drawings, showing a beautiful Colonial residence which he proposed to build on vacant property he had that day bought, just east of Jonas Bubble’s home.
“Good!” approved Jonas with a clumsily bantering glance at his daughter, who colored deliciously. “Going to get married and settle down?”
“You never can tell,” laughed Wallingford. “Whether I do or not, however, the building of one or several houses like this would be a good investment, for the highly paid decorators and modelers which the pottery will employ will pay good rents.”
Jonas nodded gravely.
“How easily success comes to men of enterprise and far-sightedness,” he declared with hearty approbation, in which there was mixed a large amount of self-complacency; for in thus complimenting Wallingford he could not but compliment himself.
On Monday Wallingford walked into the Bubble Bank quite confidently.
“Bubble, how much is my balance?” he asked, as he had done several times before.
Mr. Bubble, smiling, turned to his books.
“Three thousand one hundred and sixty-two dollars and fifty-eight cents,” said he.
“Why, I’m a pauper!” protested Wallingford. “I never could keep track of my bank balance. Well, that isn’t enough. I’ll have to borrow some.”
“I guess we can arrange that,” said Jonas with friendly, one might almost say paternal, encouragement. “How much do you want?”
“Well, I’ll have to have about forty-five thousand dollars, all told,” replied Wallingford in an offhand manner.
He had come behind the railing, as he always did. He was leaning at the end of Mr. Bubble’s desk, his hands crossed before him. From his finger sparkled a big three-carat diamond; from his red-brown cravat—price three-fifty—sparkled another brilliant white stone fully as large; an immaculate white waistcoat was upon his broad chest; from his pocket depended a richly jeweled watch-fob. For just an instant Jonas Bubble was staggered, and then the recently imbibed idea of large operations quickly reasserted itself. Why, here before him stood a commercial Napoleon. Only a week or so before Wallingford’s bank balance had been sixty thousand dollars; at other times it had been even more, andthere had been many intervals between when his balance had been less than it was now. Here was a man to whom forty-five thousand dollars meant a mere temporary convenience in conducting operations of incalculable size. Here was a man who had already done more to advance the prosperity of Blakeville than any one other—excepting, of course, himself—in its history. Here was a man predestined by fate to enormous wealth, and, moreover, one who might be linked to Mr. Bubble, he hoped and believed, by ties even stronger than mere business associations.
“Pretty good sum, Wallingford,” said he. “We have the money, though, and I don’t see why we shouldn’t arrange it. Thirty-day note, I suppose?”
“Oh, anything you like,” said Wallingford carelessly. “Fifteen days will do just as well, but I suppose you’d rather have the interest for thirty,” and he laughed pleasantly.
“Yes, indeed,” Jonas replied, echoing the laugh. “You’re just in the nick of time, though, Wallingford. A month from now we wouldn’t have so much. I’m making arrangements not to have idle capital on hand.”
“Idle money always yells at me to put it back intocirculation,” said Wallingford, looking about the desk. “Where are your note blanks?”
“Er—right here,” replied Mr. Bubble, drawing the pad from a drawer. “By the way, Wallingford, of course we’ll have to arrange the little matter of securities, and perhaps I’d better see the directors about a loan of this size.”
“Oh, certainly,” agreed Wallingford. “As for security, I’ll just turn over to you my bank stock and a holding on the Etruscan property.”
For one fleeting instant it flashed across Mr. Bubble’s mind that he had sold this very property to Wallingford for the sum of one thousand dollars; but a small patch of stony ground which had been worth absolutely nothing before the finding of gold in it had been known to become worth a million in a day, as Wallingford had once observed when looking across the great swamp, and now the mine he had sold to Wallingford for a song was worth almost any sum that might be named. Hen Moozer, when consulted, was of that opinion; Jim Ranger was of that opinion; Bud Hegler was of that opinion; the other directors were of that opinion; every one in Blakeville was of that opinion; so Wallingford got his forty-five thousand dollars, and theBubble Bank held in return a mortgage on Wallingford’s bank stock, and on forty acres of genuine Etruscan black mud.
“By the way, Mr. Bubble,” said Wallingford, tucking the bills of exchange into his pocket, “I’m going to take a little run into New York to-day. Would you mind putting the plans for my new house into the hands of the two contractors here for them to figure on?”
“With pleasure. Hope you have a good trip, my boy.”
Well, it was all over, but he was not quite so well satisfied as he had been over the consummation of certain other dubious deals. Heretofore he had hugely enjoyed the matching of his sharp wits against duller ones, had been contemptuous of the people he out-manœuvered, had chuckled in huge content over his triumphs; but in this case there was an obstacle to his perfect enjoyment, and that obstacle was Fannie Bubble. He was rather impatient about it.
He started early for the train, instructing Bob Ranger to be there to drive back the bays, and drove around by way of Jonas Bubble’s house. As he wasabout to hitch his horses the door opened, and Fannie, dressed for the afternoon, but hatless, came flying out, her head bent and her hands back over it. She was crying, and was closely pursued by Mrs. Bubble, who brandished a feather duster, held by the feather end. Wallingford ran to open the gate as Fannie approached it, closing it and latching it in time to stop her stepmother.
“What’s the matter?” he asked.
“She’s a lazy, good-for-nothing, frivolous huzzy!” declared Mrs. Bubble in hot wrath.
“I’ve been looking for just that kind,” asserted Wallingford. “She’ll do for me. Fannie, get into the buggy. I came down to take you for a ride to the depot.”
“If she goes away from this house she don’t come back till she gets down on her knees and begs my forgiveness!” shrieked the woman.
“If she does that I’ll have her sent to a bugitorium,” declared Wallingford. “She don’t need to come back here. I’ll take care of her myself. You’ll go with me, won’t you, Fannie?”
“Anywhere,” she said brokenly.
“Then come on.”
Turning, he helped her into the buggy and theydrove away, followed by the invectives of Mrs. Bubble. The girl was in a tumult of emotion, her whole little world clattering down about her ears. Bit by bit her story came out. It was sordid enough and trivial enough, but to her it was very real. That afternoon she had planned to go to the country for ferns with a few girls, and they were to meet at the house of one of her friends at one o’clock. Her stepmother had known about it three days in advance, and had given her consent. When the time came, however, she had suddenly insisted that Fannie stop to wash the dishes, which would have made her a half-hour late. There followed protest, argument, flat order and as flat refusal—then the handle of the feather duster. It was not an unusual occurrence for her stepmother to slap her, Fannie admitted in her bitterness. Her father, pompous enough outside, was as wax in the hands of his termagant second wife, and, though his sympathies were secretly with the girl, he never dared protect her.
They had driven straight out the west road in the excitement, but Wallingford, remembering in time his train schedule, made the straightestdétourpossible to the depot. He had barely time to buy histickets when the train came in, and he hurried Fannie into the parlor car, her head still in a whirl and her confusion heightened by the sudden appreciation of the fact that she had no hat. The stop at Blakeville was but a brief one, and as the train moved away Fannie looked out of the window and saw upon the platform of the little depot, as if these people were a part of another world entirely, the station agent, the old driver of the dilapidated ’bus, Bob Ranger and others equally a part of her past life, all looking at her in open-mouthed astonishment. Turning, as the last familiar outpost of the town slipped by, she timidly reached out her hand and laid it in that of Wallingford.
The touch of that warm hand laid on his electrified Wallingford. Many women had loved him, or thought they did, and he had held them in more or less contempt for it. He had regarded them as an amusement, as toys to be picked up and discarded at will; but this, somehow, was different. A sudden and startling resolve came to him, an idea so novel that he smiled over it musingly for some little time before he mentioned it.
“By George!” he exclaimed by and by; “I’m going to marry you!”
“Indeed!” she exclaimed in mock surprise, and laughed happily. “The way you said it sounded so funny.”
She was perfectly content.
Mrs. Wallingford, gowned and hatted and jeweled as Fannie Bubble had never been, and had never expected to be, tried the luxurious life that J. Rufus affected and found that she liked it. She was happy from day’s end to day’s end. Her husband was the most wonderful man in the world, flawless, perfect. Immediately upon their arrival in the city he had driven in hot haste for a license, and they were married before they left the court-house. Then he had wired the news to Jonas Bubble.
“We start on our honeymoon at once,” he had added, and named their hotel.
By the time they had been shown to the expensive suite which Wallingford had engaged, a reply of earnest congratulation had come back from Jonas Bubble. The next day had begun the delights ofshopping, of automobile rides, of the races, the roof gardens, the endless round of cafés. This world was so different, so much brighter and better, so much more pleasant in every way than the world of Blakeville, that she never cared to go back there—she was ashamed to confess it to herself—even to see her father!
Blackie Daw, still keeping out of the way of federal officers who knew exactly where to find him, met J. Rufus on the street a week after his arrival, and, learning from him of his marriage to Fannie, came around to Wallingford’s hotel to “look her over.” Fannie marveled at Signor Matteo’s rapid advance in English, especially his quick mastery of the vernacular, but she found him very amusing.
“You win,” declared Blackie with emphasis, when he and Wallingford had retired to a cozy little corner in the bar café. Fannie had inspired in him the awed respect that men of his stamp always render to good women. “You certainly got the original prize package. You and I are awful skunks, Jim.”
“She makes me feel that way, too, now and then,” admitted Wallingford. “I’d be ashamed of myself for marrying her if I hadn’t taken her from such a dog’s life.”
“She seems to enjoy this one,” said Blackie. “You’re spending as much money on her as you used to on Beauty Phillips.”
“Just about,” agreed Wallingford. “However, papa-in-law is paying for the honeymoon.”
“Does he know it?” asked Blackie.
Wallingford chuckled.
“Not yet,” he admitted. “I’d like to see him when he finds it out.”
Blackie also grinned.
“That little Blakeville episode was the happiest period of my life,” he declared. “By the way, J. Rufus, what was your game down there? I never understood.”
“As simple as a night-shirt,” explained Wallingford. “I merely hunted through the postal guide for the richest little town I could find that had no bank. Then I went there and had one started so I could borrow its money.”
Blackie nodded comprehendingly.
“Then you bought a piece of property and raised it to a fictitious value to cover the loan,” he added. “Great stunt; but it seems to me they can get you for it. If they catch you up in one lie they canprove the whole thing to have been a frame-up. Suppose they find out?”
Wallingford swelled up with righteous indignation.
“Vittoreo Matteo,” he charged, “you are a rascally scoundrel! I met you in New York and you imposed upon me with a miserable pack of lies. I have investigated and I find that there is no Etrusca, near Milan, Italy, no Etruscan black pottery, no Vittoreo Matteo. You induced me to waste a lot of money in locating and developing a black mud-swamp. When you had gained my full confidence you came to me in Blakeville with a cock-and-bull story that your mother was dying in Genoa, and on the strength of that borrowed a large sum of money from me. You are gone—I don’t know where. I shall have to make a clean breast of this matter to Jonas Bubble, and tell him that if I can not pay that note when it falls due he will have to foreclose. You heartless villain! Waiter, ice us another bottle of that ninety-three.”
When Wallingford returned to his wife he found her very thoughtful.
“When are we going to Blakeville, Jim?” she asked.
He studied her curiously for a moment. She would have to know him some time or other. He had hoped to put it off while they were leading this unruffled existence, but now that the test had come he might as well have it over with.
“I’m not going back,” he declared. “I’m through with Blakeville. Aren’t you?”
“Yes,” she admitted, pondering it slowly. “I could be happy here always, or, if not here, wherever you are. But your business back there, Jim?”
He chuckled.
“I have no business there,” he told her. “My business is concluded. I borrowed forty-five thousand dollars on that forty acres of sticky mud, and I think I’ll just let the bank foreclose.”
She looked at him a moment, dry-eyed and dry-lipped.
“You’re joking,” she protested, in a low voice.
“Not at all,” he seriously assured her.
They looked at each other steadily for some moments, and gradually Wallingford saw beneath those eyes a spirit that he might conquer, but, having conquered, would always regret.
“It’s—it’s a swindle!” she gasped, as the true situationbegan to dawn upon her. “You don’t mean, Jim, that you are a swindler!”
“No, I wouldn’t call it that,” he objected, considering the matter carefully. “It is only rather a shrewd deal in the game of business. The law can’t touch me for it unless they should chase down Vittoreo Matteo and find him to be a fraud,and prove that I knew it!”
She was thoughtful a long time, following the intricate pattern of the rug in their sitting-room with the toe of her neatly-shod foot. She was perfectly calm, and he drew a sharp breath of relief. He had expected a scene when this revelation should come; he was more than pleased to find that she was not of the class which makes scenes. Presently she looked up.
“Have you thought of what light this puts me in at home? Have you thought how I should be regarded in the only world I have ever known? Why, there are a thousand people back in Blakeville who know me, and even if I were never to meet one of them again—Jim, it mustn’t be! You must not destroy my self-respect for ever. Have you spent any of that money?”
“Well, no,” he reluctantly replied. “I have plenty of money besides that.”
“Good!” said she with a gasp of relief. “Write father that, as you will be unable to carry out your projects, you are sending him the money to take up that note.”
Wallingford was silent a long time. Wonderful the influence this girl had over him. He was amazed at himself.
“I can’t remember when I ever gave up any money,” he finally said, with an attempt at lightness; “but, Fannie, I think I’ll do it just this once—for you—as a wedding present.”
“You’ll do it right away, won’t you?”
“Right this minute.”
He walked over and stooped down to kiss her. She held up her lips submissively, but they were cold, and there was no answering pressure in them. Silently he took his hat and started down-stairs.
“By the way,” he said, turning at the door, “I’m going to make your father a present of that bay team.”
He scarcely understood himself as he dictated to the public stenographer a letter to Jonas Bubble, so far different from the one he had planned to write.It was not like him to do this utterly foolish thing, and yet, somehow, he felt that he could not do otherwise. When he came back up-stairs again, the letter written and a check inclosed in it and the whole mailed, he found her in the same chair, but now she was crying. He approached her hesitantly and stood looking down at her for a long, long time. It was, perhaps, but one minute, but it seemed much longer. Now was the supreme test, the moment that should influence all their future lives, and he dreaded to dissolve that uncertainty.
He knelt beside her and put his arm about her. Still crying, she turned to him, threw both arms around his neck and buried her head on his shoulder—and as she cried she pressed him more tightly to her!