"So you see, True, I will have a thousand dollars of my own, and if your assessments take more than you have I will send it to you, and you can invest it for me. I had intended to buy things for our house with it, but we won't need it by that time, and the success of the paper now is the all-important thing. I did not care so much at first, but now it has gone along so well, and with all the new plans and such a beautiful paper as you can get up, I want to see it make the success and fortune for you that I am sure it must. Besides, True, won't it be fine to own our interest together?
"I know, of course, that there are many unpleasant things about it,—some, I suspect, that you don't tell me of,—and that it isn't altogether the money that bothers you; but you must put up with the burden and suspense a little longer, and with Bates, who must be a dreadful nuisance, though he surely means well and works hard to get so much advertising. I should love to meet the Colonel. The first little sketch you sent me of him I have pinned up over my desk, and when I read your letters about him I look up at it and laugh and imagine just how he looks and acts. What a beautiful model he must make for the picture, and how glad I am you are working at it so enthusiastically again! Perhaps that is one reason why you are less interested in the paper, and worried over the annoyances that must always come with the more practical pursuits of life.
"You see, True, I think a good deal about all these things, and I realized even from the first that a nature like yours is not at all suited to hard and shrewd commercial enterprise, though this is not quite that, either, and the hard days will soon be over. Work right along on the picture, True, but don't think of giving up your interest in the paper. The picture will rest and comfort you now, and the paper will furnish the means of rest and comfort by and by. Then, when that time comes, perhaps I shall be able to add happiness to your life, too, and together in our beautiful home we will add happiness to the lives of others. Good-by, True. Stick fast, and remember that I am
"Always your
"Dorothy.
"P.S. True, I can send the money any time, and you must let me do it if you find it will be needed. I do not offer it as assistance, but claim the opportunity of investment.
XIII
THE HOUR OF DARK FOREBODING
With the first days of September the tension became more severe. Bills sprang up from every quarter like mushrooms, and while no one of them was very large the accumulation was considerable. The humors of the enterprise were not altogether lost sight of, however, and still furnished some relief, though there was a manifest touch of bitterness in many of their whimsicalities. There were moments of individual doubt and discouragement also—not as to the final outcome, but as to their ability to exist until such time as the crumbs which they were sowing so lavishly upon the outgoing waters should return in good brown loaves. Indeed, these were likely to be needed presently, for they were economizing at every point, and the dairy lunch and cheap table-d'hôte places served most frequently their needs. There were no more go-as-you-please dinners, and those of the past were remembered with fondness and referred to with respect.