He spoke in a new, angry voice; but I could not see his face, his back being to the light.
My mother drew his arms around us both.
“It is the best home in all the world,” she said; and thus we stayed for awhile.
“Nonsense,” said my aunt, suddenly; and this aroused us; “it's a poky hole, as I told her it would be. Let her thank the Lord she's got a man clever enough to get her out of it. I know him; he never could rest where he was put. Now he's at the bottom; he'll go up.”
It sounded to me a very disagreeable speech; but the grey man laughed—I had not heard him laugh till then—and my mother ran to my aunt and kissed her; and somehow the room seemed to become lighter.
For some reason I slept downstairs that night, on the floor, behind a screen improvised out of a clothes horse and a blanket; and later in the evening the clatter of knives and forks and the sound of subdued voices awoke me. My aunt had apparently gone to bed; my mother and the man in grey were talking together over their supper.
“We must buy land,” said the voice of the grey man; “London is coming this way. The Somebodies” (I forget the name my father mentioned) “made all their money by buying up land round New York for a mere song. Then, as the city spread, they became worth millions.”
“But where will you get the money from, Luke?” asked the voice of my mother.
The voice of the grey man answered airily:
“Oh, that's merely a matter of business. You grant a mortgage. The property goes up in value. You borrow more. Then you buy more—and so on.”