“They say best men are moulded out of faults;
And for the most, become much more the better
For being a little bad.”
“Yes, we are very happy here.”
“That fact is very evident and, as I am out for a story today, I am going to be so rude as to ask you if there is not some pain back of all this peacefulness?”
The woman addressed drew herself up to her full height, which was little more than five feet, while her gray eyes gleamed with the assurance of complete possession of some article of value.
This woman was not handsome, in fact had she been placed in less effective surroundings she would have been homely.
But she was good, although the fact that she had borne cares could not well be concealed. It was her nature and intention to see the brightest side of any object, and that trait in her character was so dominant that it outshone her physical imperfections. The writer had known her a very long time, and she had often promised him a story, so that it took but little urging on his part to get her to talk of her past life.
“I was never a famous beauty, an actress, a singer of note, nor a rich man’s daughter,” she said, by way of beginning. “I was a simple country girl whose chief duties consisted in helping my mother wash, iron, churn and pull weeds in the garden in the summer months, while the winter days were whiled away by washing dishes, going to school, and if nothing of greater importance came up for the evening, sewing carpet rags until bed time.
“Such was the monotony of the life of Virginia Dawson. My father thought little of the future, not that he failed to care, but that he failed to see that the future held anything in store for him or his children. He had been taught the lesson of frugality, the same being demonstrated by poverty. It seems strange that a discovery of nature’s deposits would be the turning point in my humdrum existence, but such was the case. My parental home was but a few miles from the now busy city of Anderson, Ind., and it was the finding of natural gas near our house that threw me into the company of Arthur Blake. He was the son of wealthy parents and, though all my sufferings are directly traceable to my early association with him, I must say that he is one of the most noble of men. He came to the community in which we dwelt as a civil engineer, having fancied that profession more than any other. A firm of Boston capitalists had employed him to investigate the extent and certainty of the gas belt. He was instructed to keep his business quiet and to conceal his real identity. To do this, he assumed the role of a laborer, going about and actually toiling with the derricks, ropes and pipes just as though he was not an heir to a large fortune.