“Did you ever advertise the fact that you were running that mill?”
“I was afraid to,” she moaned. “I used my husband’s name.”
“You see,” said Obadiah to Virginia. “I had no way of knowing that a woman was running the Brenton mill. I plead guilty to fighting men. When I get whipped I smile. When I put a man out of business he starts another. He doesn’t sit down and cry and blame me for what happens to his family ever afterwards. I never fought a woman in all of my life.”
“It’s true, Obadiah. You used to talk back but you never fought with me. I am afraid that you are going to have to get a camel through a needle’s eye; but you wouldn’t fight a woman,” interjected Aunt Kate.
Obadiah disregarded his sister’s fears and went on, “Did you ever hear of Dalton, the New York manufacturer?”
Mrs. Curtis nodded.
“Five years ago, he started to put me out of business by buying up the small mills and pooling them against me. To protect myself, I bought negotiable paper, covering mills in this locality wherever I could get it. Where I could get control of the mills, I did it. They were my competitors and would have taken my business or combined against me gladly,” Obadiah’s eyes rested anxiously upon the face of his daughter as he concluded, “I was fighting Dalton, a more powerful man than myself, not widows and orphans.”
Virginia’s face had softened but there was yet a question in her manner.
“I am an old man,” Obadiah continued. “I find that my ideas are changing and my view of life shifting. I have believed that the accumulation of wealth was everything. I know now that the happy man must accumulate other things or he will find himself deserted and miserable with his gold. In my life I have been guilty of many wrongs. I would right those wrongs if I could. Will you forgive me, Mrs. Curtis, for unknowingly harming you and yours?”
“No,” she cried. “You explain your reasons for loosening the forces which injured me; but there is no regret in your heart. You’d do the same thing tomorrow.”