She began to question him soothingly about his projects and prospects; and hereupon, for once, Fenton bent his mettle to simulate a pathetic incapacity. He set forth that he was discouraged; the future was a blank. It was child’s play, attempting to do anything without capital.
“And you have no capital?” said Nora, anxiously.
Fenton gave a poignant smile. “Why, my dear girl, I’m a poor man!”
“How poor?”
“Poor, poor, poor. Poor as a rat.”
“You don’t mean that you are penniless?”
“What is the use of my telling you? You can’t help me. And it would only make you unhappy.”
“If you are unhappy, I want to be!”
This golden vein of sentiment might certainly be worked. Fenton took out his pocket-book, drew from it four bank-notes of five dollars each, and ranged them with a sort of mournful playfulness in a line on his knee. “That’s my fortune.”
“Do you mean to say that twenty dollars is all you have in the world?”