"Good for you, Sarah," ejaculated David: "That's exactly the way I feel about it." Pride and exultation shone in his eyes. Sarah had risen to the situation, and if Sarah could, so could he.
"But can we afford to keep this house and the cottage, too?" asked Sarah anxiously.
David laughed as one laughs at the questioning of a child.
"Wait a minute, Sarah; I've got something to show you." He rose and left the room, returning presently with a drawing-board covered with sheets of drafting paper. He drew his chair near to Sarah's, rested the board on her knees, and began an enthusiastic description of the mechanism pictured in his rough drawings. Sarah could not comprehend the complexities of wheels, pulleys, flanges, and weights that David pointed out to her, but David's mechanical genius was the glory of her life, and she looked at the drawings with the rapt admiration a painter's wife might bestow on a canvas fresh from her husband's touch.
"I've been hammering at this idea a good while," concluded David, "and I believe I've got it in working shape at last. I'll have some better drawings made this week and get them off to Washington, and if all goes well, we'll have more money than we know what to do with."
"No, we won't," said Sarah. Her lips closed to a thin line, and she spoke with defiant emphasis. "That's another thing I've learned while you were away. I know what to do with money, and I don't care how rich we are."
David stared at his wife in unveiled amazement. Was this his wife, who a few short weeks ago was weeping over unwelcome riches and longing for a life of poverty? Sarah's face crimsoned with the confusion of the woman who is suddenly called upon to explain a change of mind, and she began her explanation, speaking slowly and hesitatingly.
"You remember I told you about that Mrs. Emerson who came to see me and ask me to join her club,—the Fortnightly, I believe they call it. Well, the day after you left, I dressed myself in my best and went to see her. And I told her that if the place was still open, I believed I'd join. She was real pleasant about it, and said she was so glad I'd changed my mind, and that they'd all be glad to have me for a member. And I said to her: 'Now, Mrs. Emerson, I'm not an educated woman, but I've got sense enough to know what I can do and what I can't do. I can't write papers and make speeches, but maybe there's some kind of work for me to do, if I join the club;' and she laughed and said that if I have sense enough to know what I could do and what I couldn't do, I'd make a fine club woman. And she said they had been studyin' The Ring and the Book, whatever that is, but now they've concluded to change their plan of work, and they were lookin' into the conditions of workin' people, especially workin' women, and she was sure I could help in that sort of work. And I said: 'That's very likely, for I've been a workin' woman myself, and lived with workin' women all my life.' And she said that was something to be proud of, and that every woman ought to be a workin' woman, and it was just for that reason they wanted me in the club."
Sarah paused here and bent over to straighten out a tangle in her worsteds. David was holding a paper open before him, but his wife's social adventures were of more interest to him than any page of the Inventor's Journal, and he waited patiently for Sarah to resume her story.
"The next day was Wednesday, and the club met at Mrs. Morton's—she's the president."