“Bring trouble!” No!
The cabin was saved; the enemy was in retreat. She could sing once more! “It will bring nothing but joy and freedom, you precious old Mother! Do you know what I'm going to do?”
“What, child?”
“I'm going to pay off the mortgage, every cent of it.”
She said “I” now; it had been “we” all the years before: Keep rubbing, dear old Genie. “Then I'll fix up the house and paint it, and get you some nice clothes, and a new cook stove that isn't all rusted out——”
“You won't resign, will you, Abbie—and leave me?” the mother exclaimed. The chill of possible desertion suddenly crept over her, (The Genie is often unmindful of others, especially the poor.)
“Leave you! What, now? You darling Mother. As to resigning, I may later. But I'm going to Boston when I get my vacation and stay a week with Maria, and go to the opera if I never do another thing. Oh! just you wait, Mother, you and I will lead a different life after this.”
“And you think, Abbie, you'll make more than six hundred dollars?” Already the mother's veins were expanding—wonderful elixir, this Extract of Gold.
“Six hundred! Why, if the stock goes to what they call par—and that's where they all go, so Maria says—I'll have—have—two thousand, less Mr. Taylor's two hundred—I'll have eighteen hundred dollars!” The little fellow in her bosom was rubbing away now with all his might. She could hear his heart beat against her own.