“Dr. Ray—today at lunch. He went back to Brazil and had failure after failure there—just managed to live for year after year. But he stuck to it, one thing after another. He doesn’t seem to have had much of a business head, but he must have had plenty of grit. And his luck turned at last, nothing much, but it must have seemed a fortune to him. He struck oil about a year ago—alfalfa and rose-wood and ipecacuanha, I think.”
“What a mixture!”
“A good many fortunes are mixed,” Sên observed. “He turned his little pile into money and sailed from Buenos Ayres almost at once—presumably, as the sequel shows, to repeat his visit to Rosehill. But he died on the voyage. He was buried at sea. That is the story. He left Miss Julia all he had: nearly twenty thousand dollars, Dr. Ray says. She has bought new clothes now, Ivy!”
“Black crêpe ones?” the girl said softly.
Sên King-lo nodded. “And the rest,” he added, “or most of it, she’s spending in seeing the world.”
Ruby Sên’s eyes filled with tears. “And the rest?”
“A check to the Louise Home, flowers for Confederate graves. She didn’t do it impulsively, Dr. Ray tells me. They talked it over thirty or forty times. Then one night suddenly, as they sat on the porch, Miss Julia exclaimed: ‘I’m going to do it. It’s what I’ve longed to do as long as I can remember, and I’m going to now. I’ll put one thousand dollars in the bank, to make things a trifle easier after I’m back, and to pay for my funeral. My funeral has troubled me rather—especially if I should happen to die soon after one of the garden-parties: I’m sometimes a little short of ready money then. My shroud is all ready, and the lot in the cemetery was paid for long ago, of course; but there are always extra expenses, and a Townsend must be decently buried, and buried with Townsend money.’ ”
“I don’t see Miss Julia on the rates,” Mrs. Sên said shakenly.
“No!” Sên King-lo said proudly. “ ‘I’ll put one thousand dollars away, and I’ll spend every cent of the rest and see China and Spain and the Bridge of Sighs and Westminster Abbey at last,’ and here she is in the best rooms of the best hotel!”
“I can’t think of Washington without Miss Julia across the river at Rosehill,” Ruby said musingly.