“Well, if worst came to worst—” began Rankin, then changing front, he began again: “My great-aunt—”
The doctor fell back in his chair with a groan and a laugh.
“Yes; the same one you may have heard me mention before. She told me that all through her childhood her family was saving and pulling together to build a fine big house. They worked along for years until, when she was a young lady, they finally accomplished it; built a big three-story house that was the admiration of the countryside. Then they moved in. And it took the women-folks every minute of their time, and more, to keep it clean and in order; it cost as much to keep it up, heated, furnished, repaired, painted, and everything the way a fine house should be, as their entire living used to cost. The fine big grounds they had laid out to go with the mansion took so much time to—”
“You see. You see. That’s just what I meant,” broke in the doctor.
“Well, I’m a near relative of my great-aunt’s. One day, when all the rest of the family was away, she set fire to the house and burned it to the ground, with everything in it.”
“She didn’t!” broke in Mrs. Sandworth, who had been coaxed to a fitful attention by the promise of a coherent story.
Rankin laughed. “Well, that was the way she told it to me, and I don’t doubt she would have,” he amended.
The doctor grunted, “Huh! But would you!” He went on, “You couldn’t compete with your rivals, anyhow, if you didn’t concentrate everything on making chairs. Don’t you know the successful business man’s best advertisement? ‘All of my life-strength I’ve put into the product I offer you,’ he says to the public, and it’s true.”
“Oh, well, if I couldn’t do business there’d be an end of the matter, and none of your horrible prophecies would come true.”
“Your wife wouldn’t let you.”—Dr. Melton took up another line of attack—“she’d want a motor-car and ‘nice’ associates and a fashionable school for the children, and a home in the ‘respectable’ part of town.”