“Wait. Be patient. You will see.”
“But will it be soon, Laura?”
“It will not be very long, I think.”
“But what makes you think so?”
“I have reasons—and good ones.
Just wait, and be patient.”
“But is it going to be as much as people say
it is?”
“What do they say it is?”
“Oh, ever so much. Millions!”
“Yes, it will be a great sum.”
“But how great, Laura? Will it be millions?”
“Yes, you may call it that. Yes, it will
be millions. There, now—does that
satisfy you?”
“Splendid! I can wait. I can wait
patiently—ever so patiently. Once
I was near selling the land for twenty thousand dollars;
once for thirty thousand dollars; once after that
for seven thousand dollars; and once for forty thousand
dollars—but something always told me not
to do it. What a fool I would have been to sell
it for such a beggarly trifle! It is the land
that’s to bring the money, isn’t it Laura?
You can tell me that much, can’t you?”
“Yes, I don’t mind saying that much.
It is the land.
“But mind—don’t ever hint that
you got it from me. Don’t mention me in
the matter at all, Washington.”
“All right—I won’t. Millions!
Isn’t it splendid! I mean to look around
for a building lot; a lot with fine ornamental shrubbery
and all that sort of thing. I will do it to-day.
And I might as well see an architect, too, and get
him to go to work at a plan for a house. I don’t
intend to spare and expense; I mean to have the noblest
house that money can build.” Then after
a pause—he did not notice Laura’s
smiles “Laura, would you lay the main hall in
encaustic tiles, or just in fancy patterns of hard
wood?”
Laura laughed a good old-fashioned laugh that had
more of her former natural self about it than any
sound that had issued from her mouth in many weeks.
She said:
“You don’t change, Washington. You
still begin to squander a fortune right and left the
instant you hear of it in the distance; you never wait
till the foremost dollar of it arrives within a hundred
miles of you,” —and she kissed her
brother good bye and left him weltering in his dreams,
so to speak.
He got up and walked the floor feverishly during two
hours; and when he sat down he had married Louise,
built a house, reared a family, married them off,
spent upwards of eight hundred thousand dollars on
mere luxuries, and died worth twelve millions.
Laura went down stairs, knocked at/the study door,
and entered, scarcely waiting for the response.
Senator Dilworthy was alone—with an open
Bible in his hand, upside down. Laura smiled,
and said, forgetting her acquired correctness of speech,
“Ah, come in, sit down,” and the Senator
closed the book and laid it down. “I wanted
to see you. Time to report progress from the
committee of the whole,” and the Senator beamed
with his own congressional wit.
