"Both of us. He suggested it and I wrote it. So you really cannot tell us apart?"
She shook her head. "All this winter we shall work preparing the State's mind for this institution, convincing it so thoroughly that when the legislature meets again, it simply will not dare to refuse us. When I mention we and us, understand that I am speaking to you Departmentally. After that there are ten thousand other things that we want to do. But everything is so immortally slow! We are not allowed to raise our fingers without a hundred years' war first. Don't you ever wish for money—oceans and oceans of lovely money?"
"Good heavens, no!"
"I do. I'd pepper this State with institutions. Did you know," she said sweetly, "that I once had quite a little pot of money? When I was one month old."
"Yes," said Queed, "I knew. In fact, I had not been here a week before I heard of Henry G. Surface. Major Brooke speaks of him constantly, Colonel Cowles occasionally. Do you," he asked, "care much about that?"
"Well," said Sharlee, gently, "I'm glad my father never knew."
From half a mile away, behind the bellying woodland, a faint hoot served notice that the city-bound car was sweeping rapidly toward them. It was on the tip of Queed's tongue to remind Miss Weyland that, in the case of Fifi, she had taken the ground that the dead did know what was going on upon earth. But he did not do so. The proud way in which she spoke of my father threw another thought uppermost in his mind.
"Miss Weyland," he said abruptly, "I made a—confidence to you, of a personal nature, the first time I ever talked with you. I did not, it is true, ask you to regard it as a confidence, but—"
"I know," interrupted Sharlee, hurriedly. "But of course I have regarded it in that way, and have never spoken of it to anybody."
"Thank you. That was what I wished to say."