"You're crazy, John! What do you mean?" Indeed, some doubt of his sanity now began to enter her mind.
"Read in the papers about the daily incomes of those big chaps, those really great men back East, the fellows who run things. Every one of them made it out of nothing—not one of them had any one to give him a start. We've no right to say that I can't do as well as they have. The start's the thing."
"But what has happened, then? I never saw you so stirred up before in all my life, John."
"I never have been."
"But what is sure—what can I depend on for Grace?"
"Death, taxes, and a woman's curiosity are all the sure things. I don't know anything else that is sure. No man can give all the details of his life in advance."
"In advance?"
"Oh, it hasn't all actually happened yet, of course. I won't begin wheeling home a wheelbarrow full of gold every night for quite a while. But some day I may!" His lips closed grimly.
IV
"Grace'll be a young woman before long," his wife still mused, irrelevantly.