“You won’t mind my sewing, please,” she said, picking up a bit of embroidery; “I can think better that way.”
The new customer meanwhile was wondering whether Miss Polly would guess that he had come partly from curiosity, and partly with that other far more daring motive of finding a way to do her a service. 177 And yet, who could tell? Perhaps she could give him a hint; perhaps she was the youthful sibyl people seemed half inclined to believe her.
“Miss Polly,” he said, leaning forward in his chair, with his elbows on his knees,—“Miss Polly, I’ve got an awful lot of money, and I don’t know what to do with it.”
Mere words had not often the power of staying Polly’s needle, but at this astounding declaration she actually let her work fall in her lap, and gazed with wide-eyed wonder at the speaker.
“Yes,” he went on, “I really want to do some good with it, and I’ve tried in lots of ways and I’ve never hit it off. I should just like to tell you about some of the things I’ve made a fizzle of in the last year,—if it wouldn’t bore you?”
“Oh, no, it wouldn’t bore me; nothing ever does. Only,—I can’t understand it. Why, I think I could give away a thousand dollars a year just there at home, where we used to live, and every dollar of it would be well spent!” 178
“Yes, Miss Polly,” he said very meekly, “but, you see, what I’ve got to consider is two hundred thousand dollars a year!”
He looked positively ashamed of himself, and Polly did not wonder. She had given a little gasp at mention of the sum; then she shook her head with decision. Polly knew her limits.
“I haven’t any ideas big enough for that” she said. “I should as soon think of advising the President of the United States!”
“Well, if you won’t advise me about mine, perhaps you will tell me what you are going to do with your own riches. You said you were getting rich, did you not? You know,” he added, “it isn’t necessary to make the map of a State as big as the State itself.”