“No! That is, I don’t know. Sometimes I think I do. If he’d only—well, knock ’em in the collar a little harder. I can’t tolerate a drone. But he’s promised to go to work with his father’s company if I’ll—well, you understand, marry him.”
“You could never love him, Madge.”
“Perhaps not. But he can give me what I want.”
“Money, eh?”
“The things money will buy, at any rate. And above all, he’ll be somebody if he ever puts his mind to something. He has brains.”
“And I haven’t.”
“I didn’t intimate any such thing, Joshua Cole! You have more than he has, perhaps, but your mind has a different trend. But his brains are the brains that’ll count in this world’s struggle. You’re a—a— Now, I don’t want to hurt you, but you’re a dreamer, Joshua.”
For a long time Joshua proved that he was a dreamer, for he gazed unseeingly into the dying coals and said not a word. But when he looked up his lips were straight, and in his eyes was that look of firm determination that had kept him true to his trust from boyhood, against all odds. Yet those grave gray eyes were tolerant and smiling as they looked at her.
“Yes, I’m a dreamer,” he admitted. “And I’m going to make a dreamer of you, too, Shanty Madge. Listen: Do you know this one, by John Boyle O’Reilly?
“I am tired of planning and toiling