“Dear old father! He isn’t in the South Seas now; he’s in South Africa. No, it isn’t that. I’m going to Baltimore this fall to study music. I’ve been arguing it for weeks with Aunt Louisa. I wanted to go to New York or Boston, but she said the Boston winter would kill me, and New York was too big and dangerous. So we compromised on Baltimore.”
“Hurrah!” said Elliott, with some lack of enthusiasm. “Baltimore is a delightful town. I used to be a newspaper man there before I came West and became an adventurer. I wish I were going to anything half so good.”
“You’re not leaving Lincoln, are you?” she inquired, turning quickly to look at him.
“I’m afraid I must.”
“When are you going, and where?” she demanded, almost peremptorily.
“I don’t exactly know. I had thought of trying mining again,” with a certain air of discouragement.
Margaret looked the other way, out across the muddy sheet of water known locally as Salt Lake, where a flock of wild ducks was fluttering aimlessly over the surface; and she said nothing.
“I suppose you know that the bottom’s dropped out of the land boom in Lincoln,” Elliott pursued. “I’ve seen it dropping for a month; in fact, there never was any real boom at all. Anyhow, the real estate office of Wingate Elliott, Desirable City Property Bought and Sold, closed up yesterday.”
“You don’t mean that you have—”
“Failed? Busted? I do. I’ve got exactly eighty-two dollars in the world.”