“Roscoe must be very proud,” Bella said, and observed the bright glow of pride that appeared in her sister’s eyes. “I got the news in San Francisco of Ho-o-la-a’s first dividend. Remember when I put a thousand in it at seventy-five cents for poor Abbie’s children, and said I’d sell when it went to ten dollars?”
“And everybody laughed at you, and at anybody who bought a share,” Martha nodded. “But Roscoe knew. It’s selling to-day at twenty-four.”
“I sold mine from the steamer by wireless—at twenty even,” Bella continued. “And now Abbie’s wildly dressmaking. She’s going with May and Tootsie to Paris.”
“And Carl?” Martha queried.
“Oh, he’ll finish Yale all right—”
“Which he would have done anyway, and you know it,” Martha charged, lapsing charmingly into twentieth-century slang.
Bella affirmed her guilt of intention of paying the way of her school friend’s son through college, and added complacently:
“Just the same it was nicer to have Ho-o-la-a pay for it. In a way, you see, Roscoe is doing it, because it was his judgment I trusted to when I made the investment.” She gazed slowly about her, her eyes taking in, not merely the beauty and comfort and repose of all they rested on, but the immensity of beauty and comfort and repose represented by them, scattered in similar oases all over the islands. She sighed pleasantly and observed: “All our husbands have done well by us with what we brought them.”
“And happily . . . ” Martha agreed, then suspended her utterance with suspicious abruptness.
“And happily, all of us, except Sister Bella,” Bella forgivingly completed the thought for her.