"Mrs. Lane, will you allow me to say a word?"

"Go on," she said coldly.

"I have reason to think that my father left a good deal of property. I have heard it estimated at fifty thousand dollars."

"Property is almost always very much over-estimated."

"Call it thirty thousand, then. If I go to Bowdoin, my father's college, I will get through for fifteen hundred dollars, probably."

"That's a good deal of money."

"Not when spread over four years. I shall be ready to enter next fall."

"In the four years you were at college you might work up to a good income."

"Perhaps so. If I were a poor boy, that would be a consideration."

"It is a consideration now."