The $$30,000 Bequest | Page 8

Aleck!"
"Well?"
"I'm going to cash in a whole three hundred on the missionaries-- what
real right have we care for expenses!"
"You couldn't do a nobler thing, dear; and it's just like your generous
nature, you unselfish boy."
The praise made Sally poignantly happy, but he was fair and just
enough to say it was rightfully due to Aleck rather than to himself,
since but for her he should never have had the money.
Then they went up to bed, and in their delirium of bliss they forgot and
left the candle burning in the parlor. They did not remember until they
were undressed; then Sally was for letting it burn; he said they could
afford it, if it was a thousand. But Aleck went down and put it out.
A good job, too; for on her way back she hit on a scheme that would

turn the hundred and eighty thousand into half a million before it had
had time to get cold.






CHAPTER III
The little newspaper which Aleck had subscribed for was a Thursday
sheet; it would make the trip of five hundred miles from Tilbury's
village and arrive on Saturday. Tilbury's letter had started on Friday,
more than a day too late for the benefactor to die and get into that
week's issue, but in plenty of time to make connection for the next
output. Thus the Fosters had to wait almost a complete week to find out
whether anything of a satisfactory nature had happened to him or not. It
was a long, long week, and the strain was a heavy one. The pair could
hardly have borne it if their minds had not had the relief of wholesome
diversion. We have seen that they had that. The woman was piling up
fortunes right along, the man was spending them-- spending all his wife
would give him a chance at, at any rate.
At last the Saturday came, and the WEEKLY SAGAMORE arrived.
Mrs. Eversly Bennett was present. She was the Presbyterian parson's
wife, and was working the Fosters for a charity. Talk now died a
sudden death--on the Foster side. Mrs. Bennett presently discovered
that her hosts were not hearing a word she was saying; so she got up,
wondering and indignant, and went away. The moment she was out of
the house, Aleck eagerly tore the wrapper from the paper, and her eyes
and Sally's swept the columns for the death-notices. Disappointment!

Tilbury was not anywhere mentioned. Aleck was a Christian from the
cradle, and duty and the force of habit required her to go through the
motions. She pulled herself together and said, with a pious two-per-cent.
trade joyousness:
"Let us be humbly thankful that he has been spared; and--"
"Damn his treacherous hide, I wish--"
"Sally! For shame!"
"I don't care!" retorted the angry man. "It's the way YOU feel, and if
you weren't so immorally pious you'd be honest and say so."
Aleck said, with wounded dignity:
"I do not see how you can say such unkind and unjust things. There is
no such thing as immoral piety."
Sally felt a pang, but tried to conceal it under a shuffling attempt to
save his case by changing the form of it--as if changing the form while
retaining the juice could deceive the expert he was trying to placate. He
said:
"I didn't mean so bad as that, Aleck; I didn't really mean immoral piety,
I only meant--meant--well, conventional piety, you know; er--shop
piety; the--the--why, YOU know what I mean. Aleck--the--well, where
you put up that plated article and play it for solid, you know, without
intending anything improper, but just out of trade habit, ancient policy,
petrified custom, loyalty to--to--hang it, I can't find the right words, but
YOU know what I mean, Aleck, and that there isn't any harm in it. I'll
try again. You see, it's this way. If a person--"
"You have said quite enough," said Aleck, coldly; "let the subject be
dropped."
"I'M willing," fervently responded Sally, wiping the sweat from his
forehead and looking the thankfulness he had no words for. Then,

musingly, he apologized to himself. "I certainly held threes-- I KNOW
it--but I drew and didn't fill. That's where I'm so often weak in the game.
If I had stood pat--but I didn't. I never do. I don't know enough."
Confessedly defeated, he was properly tame now and subdued. Aleck
forgave him with her eyes.
The grand interest, the supreme interest, came instantly to the front
again; nothing could keep it in the background many minutes on a
stretch. The couple took up the puzzle of the absence of Tilbury's
death-notice. They discussed it every which way, more or less
hopefully, but they had to finish where they began,