“My good sir!” gasped Jack Truman, standing squarely before him. “You might as well ask me to bring you back the moon! Ten thousand pounds—ten thousand pounds!”
“Some men pick it up in Wall Street in one afternoon—some make it by a stroke of the pen. Why! I’ve even been told—but I don’t believe it—that women get as much as that for a novel!”
“All these are clever people—they have capital, or brains, or both. I have neither one nor the other.”
“Oh ho! so you are going to cry off—and not take up my challenge, eh?”
“If I thought I had the very smallest chance—of—winning, you know I’d jump at it like a shot.”
“Well, take my advice, and jump,” said Mr. Pottinger, rising with a mighty effort—he was a seventeen-stone man. “I’ll give you two days to consider it, and now you may be off, and talk it over with Nancy. I like you, Jack, always did, you know; but I’m not going to give my little girl to a fellow that has not some stuff in him—that is not worth ’is salt. Why, look at me! I made myself what I ham! No, you just go and see if you can’t do something on the same pattern,” and he blundered heavily out of the library.
Nancy Pottinger was twenty, a pretty little dark-eyed girl, animated and energetic, clever, resourceful, and plucky.
“Such an idea, Jack!” she exclaimed. “The three years are horrible to contemplate, but imagine father thinking of anything so romantic! Lately he has been devouring old tales about knights sallying forth in quest of adventures, and returning, after many dangers, to their lady loves, to be crowned with wreaths and glory. I’m positive daddy got his idea from ‘Sir Baldwin’s Quest.’ I saw him reading it, the last month; he reads very slowly and digests every word. It has given him an idea, and he will stick to it. When he grasps an idea, he never lets it go. And if I were to run away with you, and marry you, and live with you on sixpence a week, he would be sorry for us, but he would never help us—never. He is like that—he would die of a broken heart, and leave all his money to charities! Now let us get a map, and see where you can go and make your—and my—fortune.”
“At best, I’m such a duffer,” he groaned.
“Not at all; you want self-confidence. You can do lots of things perfectly. You can mend a watch, or a bicycle, and doctor dogs.”