Upon which the old lady nodded her head and said: “Yes, yes; of course; this is what I’ve always said; this is what we are coming to!”
And Johnny Graham rolled up his tools in his greasy leather apron, and went home, pondering deeply. He was not in the least angry at the old lady; he was simply incapable of understanding her. But that night he thought it over, and pointed out to himself that, after all, if Annie’s mind was set that way, there was no use in her waiting to spend her money till he was dead and gone.
“I’ll probably be livin’ twenty years yet,” he thought, after some calculation, “and Annie maybe would be too old for a girls’ college then. She’d better go now; and anyway it might be a good investment of the money; she might set up as a teacher, maybe, after she got learned. They do say Councilman Welch’s daughter got four hundred dollars for teachin’ in the Primary School; and that’s twenty per cent. interest on two thousand dollars; I believe it’s a good thing!”
It was then that Annie came in, looking, it chanced, a little pale, and, perhaps, a little wistful. Annie was not discontented; she had no aspirations; only the child was vaguely aware of an emptiness in her life. And she had stopped at the Public Library as she came home from her work, and had read an article in a magazine concerning a College for Women in another State.
“That’s what I’d do if I were rich,” she thought, as she walked home. “I’d go there and study.”
So she was a little absent, even when she kissed her father, and heard him tell all about the big house where the rich old woman lived all by herself, because she had quarreled with her only daughter.
“Seems strange, now, to quarrel with your children,” said Johnny, buttering his bread on the tablecloth, and then, tilting his chair back, eating it with great contentment.
After supper he told Annie what he had planned for her. Her amazement at her father’s wealth was almost as keen a delight to Johnny as was her impetuous refusal to use it, and her tears because he was “so good” to her; almost as keen a joy as her final yielding to the logic of his urging, that, after all, the family would be better off if she could teach, and earn a big salary. “Six hundred dollars, maybe,” he said, stretching his imagination for the purpose of convincing her.
So it was arranged. Annie Graham was to go away to study; she was to fit herself to be a teacher; she was to be educated into her father’s intellectual superior; she was to be raised “above her station.” Would it be a failure or a success? Would she be happy or most miserable? Would the little dull, loving, ignorant gasfitter hold or lose his girl?