The next week Dick went to New York. This was in pursuance of an idea which he had confided to Winfield, on the eve of his forth-setting.
“Why,” Winfield had said to him, “you are clean left out of this deal, aren’t you?”
“Of course I am,” said Dick. “How am I going to marry a poor girl on a hundred dollars a month?”
“I might set you up for yourself—” began his employer.
“Hold on!” broke in Dick Cutter, with emphasis. “You wouldn’t talk that way if you’d ever been hungry yourself. I ’most starved that last time I tried for myself; and I’d starve next trip, sure. You’ve been a good friend to me, Jack Winfield. Don’t you make a damn fool of yourself and spoil it all.”
“But,” he added, after a pause, “I have a little racket of my own. There’s a widow in New York who smiled on yours affectionately once, ere she wed Mammon. I’m going just to see if she feels inclined to divide the late lamented’s pile with a blonde husband.”
So, the business at Tusculum being determined, and preparations for the hegira well under way, Dick went to look after his own speculation.
He reached New York on Tuesday morning, and called on the lady of his hopes that afternoon. She was out. He wrote to her in the evening, asking when he might see her. On Thursday her wedding-cards came to his hotel by special messenger. He cursed his luck, and went cheerfully about attending to a commission which Miss Euphrosyne, after much urging, had given him, trembling at her own audacity. The size of it had somewhat staggered him. She asked him to take an order to a certain large dry-goods house for nine traveling ulsters, (ladies’, medium weight, measurements enclosed,) for which he was to select the materials.
“Men have so much taste,” said Miss Euphrosyne. “Papa always knew when we were well dressed.”