“Look here”—Mrs. Mar detained him for a last aside—“you’ve got twenty-eight people to see after, and a company to manage, and nineteen claims to develop, why can’t you be content with that?”
He looked at her. “Would you be?” he asked simply.
Her face told tales. “You mean”—she hesitated—“if I’d got on the track of the Mother Lode?”
“Jest so,” said Blumpitty, and slowly he followed his wife out of the Great Importer’s house.
CHAPTER XVI
Hildegarde learned other things the next morning besides how to do your marketing for two years in an hour. She brought away from Baumgarten’s the renewed impression that Mrs. Blumpitty was a person of some practical sense, and that Mr. Blumpitty, though he might be an authority upon the Mother Lode and an estimable character to boot, did in reality himself need a good deal of looking after. It is impossible to say just how the “unlogical” feminine mind—in this case young and ignorant as well—may arrive at so definite a conclusion out of a small assemblage of apparently trifling data. For Hildegarde’s judgment was not founded merely upon the outer man. Nor was it contributed to very largely by Mr. Blumpitty’s indifference to small economies, as shown in his readiness to order gallons of expensive “olive” when cotton-seed oil was as cheap as wholesome to cook with, and Mr. Blumpitty convicted by his wife of inability to detect any difference in taste. It was not merely that Mrs. Blumpitty was the one to offer reasons why methylated spirit, though cheap on the bill, was dearer in actual use than alcohol. It was not that he had forgotten after sixteen months’ experience, “what a cravin’ you get up there fur sweet and fur sour,” and what a failure the California dried fruit had turned out the year before. Had he complained he couldn’t eat such insipid stuff till Mrs. Blumpitty had “livened” it with a dash of vinegar as well as sugar and spice? Wa-al, p’raps he had!
“You mustn’t give me dried apples from any place nearer here than Michigan,” said Mrs. Blumpitty.