Then they fell to making all sorts of plans, gayly, each tripping the other up with the prosaic reminder of improbability.

"Or, if it _should_ be anything," Luther said, "it won't be more than $100."

"Well, that's something; it will meet two monthly payments on the press."

"It will pay for a diamond-ring for you," Lute said.

"Nonsense! We'll buy father a horse."

"And who will buy the oats?" Rebecca said.

"I could give you a big oleander, Mrs. Gray," Alice told her, smiling.

"You could put the money in the bank, like a sensible girl," Rebecca said, severely. "Don't speak of this outside, either of you. Mr. Gray wouldn't wish his wife's name talked about."

"And don't let's write anything about it to him," Alice said; "let's have it a surprise!--if there is anything in it; only, of course, there isn't anything," she ended, sighing. "But you might write to the man, Lute."

"Of course there isn't anything," Lute agreed, sensibly. "I'll write if you want me to; but I wouldn't build on it, Ally," he said, as he got up to go. And when he paused a minute in the darkness on the porch, he added, softly, "If you get rich, maybe you won't want a poor printer?"

And she laughed, and said, "Maybe I won't!"

Then he kissed her just under her left ear, and said, "Money isn't everything, Ally."

III

Money isn't everything, but it has so much to do with most things that even a dim, story-book vision of it stirred Alice's imagination.

Luther, having no imagination, dismissed the vision from his mind after writing a letter to "Amos Hughes, Attorney at Law." Indeed, Luther had more practical things to think of than possible legacies, poor fellow.

His balance-sheet for that month of June was very dark. More than once, after the office was closed for the day, he sat at his desk in his shirt-sleeves, hot and tired and grimy, poring over his ledger by the light of a swinging lamp. Alice grew worried about his pallor and the hollows in his cheeks; but there was nothing she could do, though she chafed against her helplessness to help, and revolved all sorts of schemes in her impractical girl-mind. Indeed, she went so far as to pour out her heart to Dr. Lavendar, in the hope that he could make some suggestion. She found the old man sitting in the wistaria arbor near his beehives, smoking peacefully, and throwing sticks to Danny, who needed exercise and scrambled after them into the tall gra.s.s, bringing them back with fatiguing alacrity.

"Look here, sir," said Dr. Lavendar, "don't find 'em so quick. I'm worn out pitching them."

Then Alice Gray came down between the box borders and said she wanted his advice; and Dr. Lavendar, glancing up at her, saw an uncertain lip and heard a catch in her voice; whereupon he told her to give Danny a run. "The scoundrel has kept me working for the last half-hour," he complained.

When she came back, flushed and laughing, and sat down on the arbor step, her voice was quite steady; so he listened placidly to her story.

"You want to get some work to help Lute, do you, good-for-nothing?"

"Yes," Alice said, eagerly. "Oh, Dr. Lavendar, _can_ you think of anything? I wanted to go into the office and learn to set type, but Mrs. Gray--"

"Well?"

"Mrs. Gray said I had better learn to keep house economically. She said father wouldn't like it."

"Mrs. Gray would always think first of what your father would like."

Alice scratched lines in the gravel with one of Danny's sticks. "I suppose she would," she admitted.

"And what did Lute say?"

"Oh, he wouldn't listen to it. But I thought maybe you could make him, Dr. Lavendar?"

"I?" said Dr. Lavendar. "No, thank you. Do you think I'd rob the boy?"

"Rob him?"

"Of his self-respect; a boy wants to stand on his own legs; he doesn't want a girl propping him up. You let Lute alone. He'll manage. And you're young yet, anyhow. It won't hurt ye to wait. Mrs. Gray is right. You learn to be as good a housekeeper as she is; and though you mayn't put money into Lute's pocket before you're married, you'll not be taking it out after you're married."

Alice sighed. "Oh, I wish I could help Lute; I wish I had a lot of money."

"A lot of sense is better," Dr. Lavendar said, chuckling. "Oh, you women! You steal a man's unselfishness and self-respect, and you put it down to love. Love? You're a pack of thieves, the lot of you. You ought to be prosecuted. I'd do it, if I had time. Hey, Danny! bite her; she's like all the rest of 'em."

Alice hugged him, and defended herself. "You're just an old bachelor; you don't appreciate us."

"Appreciate ye? I appreciate you. Maybe that's why I'm an old bachelor."

But though he discouraged Alice's projects for a.s.sisting Luther, Dr.

Lavendar went plodding up the printing-office stairs the next morning.

Luther, emerging from behind a press, brightened at the sight of his caller, and ushered him into a small closet which he called his private office; and when Dr. Lavendar asked him to print some more missionary-meeting notices, he said he would put them in at cost price.

"Don't you do it!" said Dr. Lavendar, thumping the floor with his umbrella. "Look here; I'll have to teach you the first principles of business: make your profit--and don't go to 'pauperizing the Church,'

sir. There's too much of that sort of thing," he added, with reminiscent crossness. "Some scalawag of a bookseller wrote and offered to sell me books at thirty-three per cent. discount because I was a parson. There's no more reason why a parson should get a discount than a policeman. I told him so. I tell you so. Print those slips, and _print 'em better than you did the last lot_! Do you hear that? You forgot a comma on the second line. How's business, Lute?"

Lute's face fell. Then they talked things over, to the boy's great comfort; and at the end of the talk Lute straightened his shoulders and drew a good breath.

"By George! sir, if hanging on does it, I'll hang on--" he stopped, and looked round, in answer to a knock. "Well?" he said, impatiently.

But the gentleman who stood in the doorway was not rebuffed.

"Are you Mr. Metcalf, the editor of the _Globe_?"

"Yes, sir," said Luther.

"I called in relation to an advertis.e.m.e.nt"--Luther was instantly alert, and Dr. Lavendar, scenting a customer, was about to withdraw--"an advertis.e.m.e.nt in a New York paper, requesting information of a certain person--"

"What!" cried Luther. "I had forgotten all about it."

"My name is Carter. I am from the office of Mr. Amos Hughes. Messrs.

Pritchett, Carver, and Pritchett, Solicitors at Law, of London, are our princ.i.p.als. The advertis.e.m.e.nt was in relation to a person called Alys Winton."

Luther, stumbling in his astonishment over his words, began to explain.

"Mrs. Gray is dead," he ended. "And Alice is her daughter; isn't she, Dr. Lavendar? She asked me to write to you."

"Well, well; this is very interesting," said Dr. Lavendar. "I hope your object in seeking to obtain information is to benefit this young lady? She's one of my children."

Mr. Carter, still standing in the doorway, smiled, and said, "Do I understand that this Miss Alice is the daughter of the person named Alys Winton?"