“Ten after twelve, honey,” he answered. “You must have been reading something mighty good, and here I came in so quietly. Thought you’d be asleep!”
“Asleep! Oh, how could you! Don’t you know I’m just perishing to know what happened! Tell me—quick, quick!”
Hugh Benton’s ready grin broadened. He was teasingly slow in answering as his hand went into his pocket and he drew out a wallet, and with maddening slowness drew from it a certified check.
“Just a scrap of paper,” he commented off-handedly, “but this will tell you what you want to know, and then I’ll tell you the rest.”
Marjorie’s eyes widened with amazement at the startling figures on the face of the small piece of paper he dangled before her. She was too choked with emotion for a moment to speak. Her husband’s arms closed gently around her and he drew her to him.
“We did it, dear—you and I,” he whispered. “And it’s all for you. This is only a starter, too, for if you think this is big, you ought to see the contracts I’ve made for royalties.”
“Hugh! Hugh!” Marjorie’s voice was a sob as she kissed him again and again. “Oh, I’m too happy to tell you! Oh, please don’t wake me out of this wonderful dream!”
“Well, I, for one,” Hugh laughed as he slipped the check between his fingers, “am too used to handling these things belonging to other people to think this is a dream. There is only one thing I’m thinking of, and that is your happiness.” Marjorie drew back from him a step and looked levelly into his eyes.
“Are you quite, quite sure, Hugh dear?” she begged earnestly.
“Quite.” In that one word Hugh Benton put a world of meaning. “I’ve had plenty of time to think, too—and I’ve decided. You shall do with this money just exactly as you please. Whatever your plans are, they must be for the best, so I have given up all thoughts of the farm. And now that’s settled,” he said, in the old way, giving himself a little shake of renunciation.