“Don’t know. Can’t tell. Sometimes ye need money when ye least expect it. Ye needn’t tell anybody how much you’ve got. Only, it’s there—and a full pocket is a mighty nice backin’ for anybody to have.
“And if ye find any time ye want more, jest telegraph. We’ll send ye what they call a draft for all ye want. Cut a dash. Show ’em that the girl from Sunset Ranch is the real thing, Snuggy.”
But she had only laughed at this. It never entered Helen Morrell’s mind that she should ever wish to “cut a dash” before her relatives in New York.
She had filed a telegram to Mr. Willets Starkweather, on Madison Avenue, before the train arrived, saying that she was coming. She hoped that her relatives would reply and she would get the reply en route.
When her father died, she had written to the Starkweathers. She had received a brief, but kindly worded note from Uncle Starkweather. And it had scarcely been time yet, so Helen thought, for Aunt Eunice or the girls to write.
But could Helen have arrived at the Madison Avenue mansion of Willets Starkweather at the same hour her message arrived and heard the family’s comments on it, it is very doubtful if she would have swung herself aboard the parlor car of the Transcontinental, without the porter’s help, and sought her seat.
The Starkweathers lived in very good style, indeed. The mansion was one of several remaining in that section, all occupied by the very oldest and most elevated socially of New York’s solid families. They were not people whose names appeared in the gossip columns of the papers to any extent; but to live in their neighborhood, and to meet them socially, was sufficient to insure one’s welcome anywhere.
The Starkweather mansion had descended to Willets Starkweather with the money—all from his great-uncle—which had finally put the family upon its feet. When Prince Morrell had left New York under a cloud, his brother-in-law was a struggling merchant himself.
Now, in sixteen years, he had practically retired. At least, he was no longer “in trade.” He merely went to an office, or to his broker’s, each day, and watched his investments and his real estate holdings.
A pompous, well-fed man was Willets Starkweather—and always imposingly dressed. He was very bald, wore a closely cropped gray beard, eyeglasses, and “Ahem!” was an introduction to almost everything he said. That clearing of the bronchial tubes was an announcement to the listening world that he, Willets Starkweather, of Madison Avenue, was about to make a remark. And no matter how trivial that remark might be, coming from the lips of the great man, it should be pondered upon and regarded with awe.