“We-ell, of course that does count a little bit. Madeline is our only child, and naturally we should prefer to have her pick out a husband with a dollar or so in reserve.”
“Um-hm. Al's twenty-one, Mr. Fosdick. When I was twenty-one I had some put by, but not much. I presume likely 'twas different with you, maybe. Probably you were pretty well fixed.”
Fosdick laughed aloud. “You make a good cross-examiner, Snow,” he observed. “As a matter of fact, when I was twenty-one I was assistant bookkeeper in a New Haven broker's office. I didn't have a cent except my salary, and I had that only for the first five days in the week.”
“However, you got married?”
“Yes, I did. More fool I! If I had known anything, I should have waited five years at least. I didn't have any one to tell me so. My father and mother were both dead.”
“Think you'd have listened to 'em if they had been alive and had told you? However, however, that's all to one side. Well, Albert's havin' no money to speak of is an objection—and a good honest one from your point of view. His prospects here in this business of mine are fair, and he is doin' better at it than he was, so he may make a comf'table livin'—a comf'table South Harniss livin', that is—by and by.”
“Oh, he is with you, then? Oh, yes, I remember my wife said he worked in your office. But she said more about his being some sort of a—a poet, wasn't it?”
For the first time since the interview began the captain looked ill at ease and embarrassed.
“Thunderation!” he exclaimed testily, “you mustn't pay attention to that. He does make up poetry' pieces—er—on the side, as you might say, but I keep hopin' all the time he'll grow out of it, give him time. It 'ain't his regular job, you mustn't think 'tis.”
The visitor laughed again. “I'm glad of that,” he said, “both for your sake and mine. I judge that you and I, Snow, are in complete agreement as far as our opinion of poetry and that sort of stuff is concerned. Of course I'm not condemning all poetry, you understand. Longfellow and Tennyson and the regular poets are all right. You understand what I'm getting at?”