“There ain't anything the matter,” answered Andrew, with a strange sullenness for him.
“There is, too. Now, Andrew Brewster, I ain't goin' to be put off. I know you're on the shelf on account of hard times, so it ain't that. It's something new. Now I want to know what it is.”
“It ain't anything.”
“Yes, it is. Andrew, you ought to tell me. You know I ain't afraid to bear anything that you have to bear, and Ellen is getting old enough now, so she can understand, and she can't always be spared. She'd better get a little knowledge of hardships while she has us to help her bear 'em.”
“This ain't a hardship, and there ain't anything to spare, Ellen,” said Andrew; and he laughed with a hilarity totally unlike him.
That was all Fanny could get out of him, but she was half reassured. She told Eva that she didn't believe but he had been buying some Christmas present that he knew was extravagant for Ellen, and was afraid to tell her because he knew she would scold. But Andrew had not been buying Christmas presents, but speculating in mining stocks. He had resisted the temptation long. Year in and year out he had heard the talk right and left in the shop, on the street, and at the store of an evening. “I'll give you a point,” he had heard one say to another during a discussion as to prices and dividends. He had heard it all described as a short cross-cut over the fields of hard labor to wealth and comfort, and he had kept his face straight ahead in his narrow track of caution and hereditary instincts until then. “The savings bank is good enough for me,” he used to say; “that's where my father kept his money. I don't know anything about your stocks. I'd rather have a little and have it safe.” The men could not reason him out of his position, not even when Billy Monroe made fifteen hundred dollars on a Colorado mine which had cost him fifteen cents per share, and left the shop, and drove a fast horse in a Goddard buggy.
It was even reported that fifteen hundred was fifteen thousand, but Andrew was proof against this brilliant loadstar of success, though many of his mates followed it afar, just before the shares dropped below par.
Jim Tenny went with the rest. “Tell you what 'tis, Andrew, old man,” he said, clapping Andrew on the shoulder as they were going out of the shop one night, “you'd better go in too.”
“The savings-bank is good enough for me,” said Andrew, with his gentle doggedness.
“You can buy a trotter,” urged Jim.