“Tired, daddy dear?” she queried gently.
“Yes, love, and ruined,” he answered quietly. “There is just enough saved from the wreck to take us out to your lover’s island and keep us there till we die. And I don’t know that I’m sorry. I can’t say that the Lord gave, but I think the Lord has taken away, and I can say I know, that blessed be the name of the Lord.”
CHAPTER XXI Marriage and Departure
For a little while after Mr. Stewart had communicated this important news they all sat in perfect stillness: C. B. because he did not in the least understand what had happened, but he could see it was something that had tremendously upset these two people who were so dear to him. Mr. Stewart was the first to speak.
“I can never feel sufficiently grateful,” he said, “for the impulse to fix up that annuity for Taber on the spot and for yielding to it. It was only in the nick of time, for this great crash came yesterday afternoon. Had I been in San Francisco it would not have—— But there, why should I say that, Levy is as good and keen and straight a man as I am, and the very best of us get caught sometimes. Even now, if it wasn’t for you, my boy, I think I should have turned to and had a fight for it; but you’ve kinder infected me with your pleasant doctrines, putting me out of conceit with money grubbing for its own sake.”
Mary here burst in impetuously—
“Oh, dear Daddy, that I should hear you say so makes me so glad. I feel glad to think that we have lost our money if only we can get to this happy land that Christmas is looking forward to so hungrily. I felt almost jealous of it, and now I am as eager as he is.”
Just then a rap came at the door and in walked the bell-boy with a telegram. The old gentleman tore it open and fell back in his chair, his face ghastly. Both Mary and C. B. sprang to his assistance, but he roused himself with an effort, and waving them back to their seats said, in a hard, strained voice—