“Anything, anything, dear Mrs. Briggs!” interrupted a voice, glad enough to belong to a girl, as Gabriella peeped in from the little verandah where she had been writing home to little Ned and where she had overheard all the above conversation. “Any sort of eastern cooking is delicious to me. I haven’t been so hungry in a long, long time as since I came ‘home.’”
Not only to little Ned, whose pride at receiving a letter all his own she could picture, but to that most helpful lawyer friend, Mr. Hale, had she been writing; and it was due to his kind offices that soon there joined these happy cottage folk another who could hardly believe her good fortune true.
“Ah! little daughter! That is the best of having this abundance of money—though I can scarcely realize yet, that it is really our own and it’s right to use it—that one may make others happy with it. So Mr. Hale has arranged with the surgeons in charge to have Sophy Nestor brought up here to stay as long as we do. I’ve hired that other little cottage, across the way—that empty one—for we shall need extra sleeping rooms. She is to be brought, ‘strapped’ as she must be for long to come, and her attendant nurse with her. The surgeon will run up, now and then, when it is necessary, and her improvement will not be hindered because of her coming. Indeed, the change of air will help her to grow strong. When I think of what we owe that child—I am almost overcome with gratitude.
“More than that, you and I will sail down to the city, to-morrow morning, and you shall select the very prettiest little set of furniture you see and it shall be for her own bedroom. We will give her one happy summer, if we can, despite that dreadful ‘strapping’ and lying still that is the price of her recovery. Ah! my darling! God was good to us when He sent old Pedro to show the way to that copper mine, with its immeasurable results of benefit to the poor and afflicted!”
That was always the way Gabriella talked. It was ever the one thought of her heart that this now rapidly growing, famous “Sobrante” mine was but a trust placed in her hands and those of her children for the happiness of other people. It made her very grateful, even more humble, to have been accounted worthy to hold this “trust”; and, thus listening to the wise mother whom she adored, little Jessica was in small danger ever of loving money for money’s sake.
To them sometimes laughingly spoke the more worldly-wise Madam.
“But shall you never do anything for the Trents themselves, my Gabriella? Shall you be always content to live in a frame house in a wilderness? Is Jessica never to have the benefit of that ‘society’ for which Madam Mearsom and her own wealth, will fit her? Remember that a little—just a little—is due those poor Trents and Waldrons!”
“All in good time, Cousin Margaret. The frame house has been, is still, the happiest of homes. When you come out to California to spend next winter in the sunshine, you’ll see for yourself how cosy we are. There is a hospital to be built, first; for so many, many workmen are coming to our dear Golden Valley, that there must sometimes be illness or even injury. We must have a place to care for them. We must have a fine school. The workmen have wives and children. We must have homes, dozens of those pretty ‘frame cottages,’ if you please! for them to live in. We must have a church. Maybe I should have put that first. We must have stores and libraries—Oh! there is no end to the things we must have if—if that mine holds out to pay for them!”
Such enthusiasm was contagious. Said the Madam, with mock dismay:
“Hold your tongue, Gabriella Trent! Or the first thing I know I shall be giving away that parcel of land in Washington Square for some ridiculous charity. Just say no more and let me keep my common sense, which you’ve almost talked out of my head.”