"No. I worked early and late. I was a poor boy. All that I have, I made by hard work."
"Take my advice, Wolverton, and get the worth of it while you live. But perhaps you are saving with a view to matrimony. Ha, ha!"
And Richard burst into a ringing laugh.
Wolverton puckered up his face, and snarled:
"Why shouldn't I marry if I choose? What is there to laugh at?"
"No reason at all. I advise you to marry. You ought to, for I have found happiness in marrying one of the sweetest women in the world."
Then without any apparent reason, remembering that the man before him had aspired to the hand of his wife, he burst into another laugh, which he kept up till the tears ran from his eyes. He didn't notice the evil expression which it called up in the face of the moneylender.
"I'd like to kill him where he stands," thought Aaron Wolverton. "She must have told him about me. Curse him! he stole her from me, and now he dares to laugh in my face!"
But Wolverton was not a man to indulge even his evil temper when it was impolitic to do so. He forced himself to look indifferent, and merely said:
"Let them laugh that win, Mr. Burton. Perhaps my time may come some day."