My mother, in her anxiety to justify the enormous outlay said, "Well, anyhow, these improvements are not entirely for me, they will make the house all the nicer for my New Daughter when she comes."
"That's true," I answered, "I hadn't thought of that."
"It's time you thought of it. You're almost forty years old," she replied with humorous emphasis, then she added, "I begin to think I never will see your wife."
"Just you wait," I jestingly replied. "The case is not so hopeless as you think—I have just received a letter which gives me a 'prospect.'"
I said this merely to divert her, but she seized upon my remark with alarming seriousness. "Read me the letter. Where does she live?—Tell me all about her."
Being in so far I thought it could do no harm to go a little farther. I described (still in bantering mood) my first meeting with Zulime Taft more than five years before. I pictured her as she looked to me then, and as she afterward appeared when I met her a second time in the home of her sister in Chicago. "I admit that I was greatly impressed by her," I went on, "but just when I had begun to hope for a better understanding, her brother Lorado chilled me with the information that she was about to be claimed by another man. To be honest about it, mother, I am not sure that she is interested in me even now; although one of her friends has just written me to say that Lorado was mistaken, and that Zulime is not engaged to any one. I am going down to visit some friends at the camp to test the truth of this; but don't say a word about it, for my information may be wrong."
My warning went for nothing! My confession was too exciting to be kept a secret, and soon several of mother's most intimate friends had heard of my expedition, and in their minds, as in hers, my early marriage was assured. Did not the proof of it lie in the fact that I was pushing my building with desperate haste? Was this not done in order to make room for my bride?—No other reason was sufficient to account for the astounding improvements which I had planned, and which were going forward with magical rapidity.
Of course no one could convince my mother that her son's "attractions" might not prove sufficiently strong to make his "prospect" a possibility, for to her I was not only a distinguished author, but a "Good provider," something which outweighed literary attainment in a home like ours.
She could not or would not speak of the girl as "Miss Taft," but insisted upon calling her "Zuleema," and her mind was filled with plans for making her at home.
Privately I was more concerned than I cared to show, and I would be giving a false impression if I made light of my feeling at this time. I spoke to mother jestingly in order to prevent her from building her hopes on an unstable foundation.