“What do you mean, Mrs. Hunt?”
She dropped into a chair nervelessly, as if exhausted. After a pause she said: “It’s in all the papers. I thought the Herald might be mistaken, so I bought the Tribune and the Times and the Sun. But no. It was the same in all. It was,” she added, tragically, “93!”
“Yes?” he said, smilingly.
The smile did not reassure her; it irritated her and aroused her suspicions. By him, of all men, should her insomnia be deemed no laughing matter.
“Doesn’t that mean a loss of $3,000?” she asked. There was a deny-it-if-you-dare inflection in her voice of which she was not conscious. Her cousin’s husband had been a careful gardener.
“No, because you are not going to sell your bonds at 93, but at 110, or thereabouts.”
“But if I did want to sell the bonds now, wouldn’t I lose $3,000?” she queried, challengingly. Then she hastened to answer herself: “Of course I would, Mr. Colwell. Even I can tell that.”
“You certainly would, Mrs. Hunt; but——”
“I knew I was right,” with irrepressible triumph.
“But you are not going to sell the bonds.”