Venus played a trick on you—didn't she, and on herself, too, the jade!
Pollie became stout—enormously stout—the pearl-like pink of her cheek now looked like burnt sienna, mixed with chrome yellow. She used to sit all day in front of the store, looking at the pump.
She ceased to hear the pump; she did not even hear its creak, which she once thought musical.
Her husband sent for a doctor. "Chronic dementia," the doctor diagnosed it.
She was sent to an asylum, and there she lived for thirty-eight years.
Religiously, once a month, her husband went to visit her, but her brain was melted and her dull, dead eyes gave no sign. She was only a derelict, waiting for death.
The first six years that Girard was in Philadelphia he made little headway. But he did not lose courage. He knew that the war must end sometime, and that when it did, there would be a great revival of business.
When others were beaten out and ready to give up, and prices were down, he bought. Merchant ships were practically useless, and so were for sale. He bought one brand-new boat and named it "The Water-Witch," for this was the name he had for Pollie Lumm when she used to come with her jug to his pump.
As soon as the war closed and peace was declared, Girard loaded his two ships with grain and cotton and dispatched them to Bordeaux.