CHAPTER XVI
A SLEEPLESS NIGHT
It was close upon the beginning of another day before Jessie and I got to bed, but, late as it was, I could not sleep.
Our pressing financial problem was so constantly in my thoughts that now, in my weariness, I found myself unable to dismiss it. We had collected some money, but not enough—not enough! I turned and tossed restlessly. Now that the time for proving up was so close at hand an increasing terror of failure grew upon me. It did not seem to me that I should be able to endure it if we were obliged to give up our home. Forty dollars! In the stillness of the night that sum, as I reflected upon it, dwindled into insignificance. I reviewed all of our monetary transactions that I could think of, and, adding up the sum total, half convinced myself that we must have made a mistake in the counting that evening.
“I’m quite sure that there’s more than forty dollars,” I told myself, turning over my hot pillow in search of a cooler side, and giving it a vigorous shake. “I’m quite sure! There’s the money for Mr. Horton’s mending, that was forty cents; and Miss Jones’s wrapper was two dollars; and that setting of eggs that I sold to Jennie Speers—I don’t remember whether they were two dollars or only fifty cents. Oh, dear! And there was Cleo’s calf; that was—I don’t remember how much it was!”
The longer I remembered and added up, and remembered and subtracted, the less I really knew. By the time that my fifth reckoning had reduced our hoard to twenty-seven dollars I would gladly have gotten up and counted the money again, but Jessie had it in charge and I did not know where she kept it. It was small consolation in the desperate state of uncertainty into which I had worked myself to reflect that I had only myself to blame for this. Being a somewhat imaginative young person, I had reasoned that if burglars were to break into the house and demand to know the whereabouts of our hidden wealth it might be possible for Jessie, who knew, to escape, taking her knowledge with her, while I, who did not know, might safely stand by that declaration. It was rather a far-fetched theory, but Jessie had willingly subscribed to it. If not actually apprehensive of robbery, she was, perhaps, more inclined to trust to her own quiet temper, in a case of emergency, than to my warmer one. At the same time she understood very well that I had an unusual talent for silence. It was this talent that induced me to stay my hand late that night just as I was on the point of rousing Jessie and asking her where she had put the money. She was sleeping soundly and she was very tired.
“I’ll count it all over the first thing in the morning,” I thought; and with the resolution, dropped off to sleep.