Called to Chicago suddenly. I must have one hundred dollars payment on account of the gold stock immediately. Cannot let my daughter marry a man who puts off paying for gold stock forever. Unless I hear from you with money to-morrow, all is over between us.
Such a letter would have made any lover sad. Mr. Gubb had no idea where he could raise one hundred dollars during the day and he saw his promising romance cut short just when Syrilla was beginning to lose weight handsomely. The greeting he received when he reached Aunt Martha Turner’s was not of a sort to cheer him. Mrs. Turner met him with a sour face.
“No, you can’t go ahead with puttin’ the wall-paper on this kitchen ceilin’ to-day, Mr. Gubb,” she said.
“I’d like to, if I could,” said Philo Gubb wistfully. “My financial condition ain’t such as to allow me to waste a day. I’m very low in a monetary shape, right now.”
Aunt Martha Turner seemed worried.
“Well,” she said reluctantly, “I guess if that’s the case you might as well go ahead. I expect I’ll have to be out of the house ’most all day. If you get done before I get back, lock the kitchen door and put the key behind a shutter.”
She departed, and Philo Gubb set up his trestle, unrolled and trimmed a strip of ceiling-paper, pasted it, and climbed his ladder. At the top he seated himself a moment and shook his head.
He sighed and picked up the paste-covered strip of ceiling-paper, but before he could get to his feet the kitchen door opened and “Snooks” Turner put his head in cautiously.
“Say, Gubb, where’s Aunt Martha?” he asked in a whisper.
“She’s gone out,” said Philo Gubb. “She won’t be back for quite some time, I guess, Snooksy.”