A Hazard of New Fortunes — Volume 2

Produced by David Widger
By William Dean Howells
The evening when March closed with Mrs. Green's reduced offer, and decided to take her apartment, the widow whose lodgings he had rejected sat with her daughter in an upper room at the back of her house. In the shaded glow of the drop-light she was sewing, and the girl was drawing at the same table. From time to time, as they talked, the girl lifted her head and tilted it a little on one side so as to get some desired effect of her work.
It's a mercy the cold weather holds off, said the mother. We should have to light the furnace, unless we wanted to scare everybody away with a cold house; and I don't know who would take care of it, or what would become of us, every way.
They seem to have been scared away from a house that wasn't cold, said the girl. Perhaps they might like a cold one. But it's too early for cold yet. It's only just in the beginning of November.
The Messenger says they've had a sprinkling of snow.
Oh yes, at St. Barnaby! I don't know when they don't have sprinklings of snow there. I'm awfully glad we haven't got that winter before us.
The widow sighed as mothers do who feel the contrast their experience opposes to the hopeful recklessness of such talk as this. We may have a worse winter here, she said, darkly.
Then I couldn't stand it, said the girl, and I should go in for lighting out to Florida double-quick.
And how would you get to Florida? demanded her mother, severely.
Oh, by the usual conveyance Pullman vestibuled train, I suppose. What makes you so blue, mamma? The girl was all the time sketching away, rubbing out, lifting her head for the effect, and then bending it over her work again without looking at her mother.
I am not blue, Alma. But I cannot endure this—this hopefulness of yours.