She dominated his world of boyhood dreams, and since he was not deaf to the talk about himself and "Cyrus Spradling's gal," he wondered if he ought not to tell Happy the whole truth. But after long reflection he shook his head.
"It would only hurt Happy, like telling her about dreams that come at night—of some sort of heaven where I don't see her, herself." And so he did not tell her.
One day in the spring of the year when Anne was sixteen, Mrs. Larry Masters dropped into the office of her kinsman, Tom Wallifarro, to talk over some small matter of business. It was one of the regrets of the lady's life—a life somewhat touched and frost-bitten by bitterness—that all of her business was small. It was, however, one of her compensations that this gentleman gave to her petty affairs as much care and consideration as to the major features of his large practice.
"My dear," observed the Colonel irrelevantly as he looked at the weary eyes of the woman who had in her day been an almost famous beauty, "you seem worried. You are altogether too young to let lines creep into your face."
Mrs. Masters laughed mirthlessly.
"I have a daughter growing up. I am ambitious for her. She has charm, grace, breeding—and she's the poor member of a rich family. Such things bring wrinkles around maternal eyes, Cousin Tom."
"Happily she lives in Kentucky," the lawyer reminded his visitor. "We are yet provincial enough to think something of blood, even when it's not gilded with money."
"Yes, thank God—and thanks to you, she has had educational advantages. If Larry had only had business sense—but I can't talk patiently about Larry."
"No—I wish you could bring yourself to think of him more indulgently, but—" Colonel Tom knew the fruitlessness of that line of counsel, so he brushed lightly by to other topics. "But that isn't what I wanted to talk about. I think Morgan ought to travel abroad for several months, don't you?"