"Well, no, dear, not very; though people always said that he was a man that would rise."
"But you didn't begin in a house like this, mamma. You began at the beginning and helped him up, didn't you?"
"Well, yes, dear, we did begin in a quiet way; and I had to live pretty carefully the first years of my life; and worked hard, and know all about it; and I want to save you from going through the same that I did."
"May be if you did I should not turn out as you are now. But really, mother, if pa is embarrassed, why do we live so? Why don't we economize? I am sure I am willing to."
"Oh, darling! we mustn't. We mustn't make any change; because, if the idea should once get running that there is any difficulty about money, everybody would be down on your father. We have to keep everything going, and everything up, or else things would go abroad that would injure his credit; and he could not get money for his operations. He is engaged in great operations now that will bring in millions if they succeed."
"And if they don't succeed," said Eva, "then I suppose that we shall lose millions—is that it?"
"Well, dear, it is just as I tell you, we rich people live on a very uncertain eminence, and for that reason I wanted to see my darling daughter settled securely."
"Well, mamma, now I will tell you what I have been thinking of. Since 'riches make to themselves wings and fly away,' what is the sense of marrying a man whose main recommendation is, that he is rich? Because that is the thing that makes Mr. Sydney more, for instance, than Mr. Henderson, or any other nice gentleman we know. Now what if I should marry Mr. Sydney, who, to say the truth, dear mamma, I do not fancy, and who is rather tiresome to me—and then some fine morning his banks should fail, his railroads burst up, and his place on the North River, and his villa at Newport have to be sold, and he and I have to take a little unfashionable house together, and rough it—what then? Why, then, when it came to that, I should wish that I had chosen a more entertaining companion. For there isn't a thing that I am interested in that I can talk with him about. You see, dear mother, we have to take it 'for better or for worse;' and as there is always danger that the wheel may turn, by and by it may come so that we'll have nothing but the man himself left. It seems to me that we should choose our man with great care. He should be like the pearl of great price, the Bible speaks of, for whom we would be glad to sell everything. It should be somebody we could be happy with if we lost all beside. And when I marry, mother, it will be with a man that I feel is all that to me."
"Well, Eva dear, where'll you find such a man?"
"What if I had found him, mother—or thought I had?"