"After all this spending of money, perhaps it would not prove," rejoined Mrs. Mathers.
"We won't know if we don't try," retorted Frank; "people don't make fortunes staring about them with their hands in their pockets."
"But you don't mean to say," almost angrily said Mrs. Mathers, "that you would send them your money in that fashion?"
"I do," answered the young man in a decided tone. He was growing impatient at what he thought to be a wanton check of progress on his step-mother's part.
Here, Mr. Mathers left the room without having said a word.
Frank watched him disappear and then remarked: "Do you think these people are going to work for nothing? They would be fools."
"Oh! 'tis not they who are fools," sarcastically remarked his step-mother.
The young man waxed hot. His whole being was rising in wrath within him. He, however, mastered his passions. It was his duty to bend, and he did so. "If I could convince her, if I could make her feel as I myself feel," he thought.
For one minute he was silent, not knowing how to begin the speech that was to bring conviction into her soul.