"It's strange our nearly running over him, just then and there. That old shack is the Dabney House, and you know it's he who got up the Settlement idea."
"No, I didn't know it," said Canning, slowing down to take a corner which led on to civilization. "Still," he added, "I shan't let that stay my generosity. I resolved three blocks back to subscribe five hundred--just to throw you in the shade--and I will not be deterred."
Having been duly applauded for his prodigality, he inquired: "How much, by the way, is the good doctor donating out of his forty thousand?"
"Not a cent!" said Carlisle, who had questioned Hen on this very point.
It was thus, indeed, that circumstances had given demolishing weight to her club. "If I had money I'd probably hang on to every cent," the man had said, that winter morning on his uncle's doorstep; and now he had money, a lot of it, and hanging on he undoubtedly was. Hen herself had confessed it, with a certain defiance, trying to create the impression that the man was merely reserving his funds for some other good purpose....
The triumphant ring in Carlisle's voice might have struck Canning as odd, if he had happened to notice it. Still more obscure, however, were the inner processes which led him to say:
"Does he make any charge for the thought?... Well, it's a fine thought, all the same; a fine work. On reconsideration I raise my subscription to a thousand. Hang the expense!..."
There was another gay burst of felicitation, after which Carlisle became somewhat silent. Canning, bowling proficiently up Washington Street, spoke of his honored maternal grandmother, the great lady Mrs. Theodore Spencer, and her famous Brookline home. Beside him, Carlisle, listening with one ear only, considered the strangeness of life. Transfigured within, she had seemed to look out upon a new universe, yet was not this somehow the face of an old familiar, slyly peeping? Of what use, then, were clubs? When were things ever settled, if she could be conscious of a little cloud no larger than a man's hand even now, with the living guarantee of her omnipotence at her side?...
"Who was that?" said Canning, suspending conversation to bow, with Carlisle, to a passing female pedestrian.
"Oh," she laughed, a little vexedly, roused from her meditations--"just one of my poor relations."