“Your mother seems to be pretty well fixed.”
“Yes.”
“No doubt she’s as well off as I am,” suggested the general, who was not without his share of American curiosity.
“She never speaks to me of her property,” said Ben, “but we always travel in first-class style and put up at the best hotels.”
“So that I am afraid you will never have to hustle for yourself.”
Ben smiled.
“I don’t know. Stranger things have happened,” he answered.
“Well, if it comes, you’ll always have a friend in Obed Flint.
“Do you think your mother would favor a second marriage?” asked the general, after a pause.
Ben regarded his companion with surprise, but he had such a matter-of-fact manner that he concluded he must be in earnest, strange as the question was.