“Well,” she was very deliberate, “it is a good lesson for you. You’ll have much more sympathy for sensitive folks hereafter.”
The turbulence subsided. It had been rather noisy for a moment or two—both voices had risen—all of which made the ensuing silence rather awkward. Jerry seemingly had remained serene throughout; but the man was naturally shaken—he had exhibited quite a new variety of Richard. But even he gradually got control of himself.
“Suppose,” he began the conversation. “Suppose I am able to fix up the accounts,” he ventured; “will you let me have a try at it?”
“What would you do?” she asked. But before he could answer she said, “I don’t want you to think that I am not terribly concerned about ‘Red Jacket.’ I may not show it, but I feel those debts, especially the money we owe to the——” she could not tell him that disgrace, but he knew she was about to say “to the negroes”—“especially some of the debts,” she corrected herself; “I feel the whole thing so keenly that nothing else matters.... I am not likely to show a thing like that.... There are many things I am not likely to show.... It’s pride, I suppose; but we Virginians—oh, I’m a Virginian!—are proud of our pride; it is the one possession we have been taught to hold to.... When we sell out or borrow on that! well, we’re done for!... It is a great wrench to tell you even this much, but you have misunderstood me more than once——”
“Forgive me, Jerry,” he asked so sincerely that for a moment she hardly dared go on.
“Let’s go home,” she spoke abruptly and rose.
At the porch he asked her again to let him help with the finances.
“Someone must do it,” she said; “it might as well be you. It’s like the business of hiring an undertaker,” she smiled squarely at him, gamely, “and you might as well get the job. I’ll turn the papers over to you to-night, and the quicker you get at it the better. No,” she changed her mind. “Don’t do anything until after the races next week. And don’t be surprised, Richard dear,” she reverted to the phrase she had used at the top of the hill back of Naples, “if you find me quite careless and birdlike for the next few days. We own ‘Red Jacket’ until it is sold out from under us. I’ll not let that sale begin in my mind until it begins in fact.”
“Ah!” he joked, “don’t you be too sure that it will be sold at all! Remember that I’m the financial manager now! I’m on the job, and don’t you forget it!”
“Poet!” she tapped him ever so gently on the arm, “dear, good, kind, blue-eyed, impractical poet!”