“You?” Archie asked, and Maude replied, “Yes, I, why not? I know I am poor now, but I shall not always be so. People call me crazy, a dreamer, a crank, and all that, because they cannot see what I see; the people who are with me always, my friends; and I know their names and how they look and where they live; Mrs. Kimbrick, with her fifty daughters, all Eliza Anns, and Mrs. Webster, with her fifty daughters, all Ann Elizas, and Angeline Mason, who comes and talks to me in the twilight, wearing a yellow dress; they are real to me as you are, and do you think I am crazy and a crank because of that?”
Archie said he didn’t, but he looked a little suspiciously at the girl standing there so erect, her eyes shining with a strange light as she talked to him of things he could not understand. He had heard of this Mrs. Kimbrick and Mrs. Webster before, with their fifty daughters each, and had thought Maude queer, to say the least. He was sure of it now as she went on:
“Is the earth crazy because there is in it a little acorn which you can’t see, but which is still there, maturing and taking root for the grand old oak, whose branches will one day give shelter to many a tired head? Of course not; neither am I, and some time these brain children, or brain seeds, call them what you like, will take shape and grow, and the world will hear of them, and of me; and you and your mother will be proud to say you knew me once, when the people praise the book I am going to write.”
“A book!” and Archie laughed incredulously, it seemed so absurd that little Maude Graham should ever become an author of whom the world would hear.
“Yes,” she answered him decidedly. “A book! Why not? It is in me; it has been there always, and I can no more help writing it than you can help doing,—well, nothing, as you always have. Yes, I shall write a book, and you will read it, Archie More, and thousands more, too; and I shall put Spring Farm in it, and you, and your uncle Max. I think I shall make him the villain.”
She was very hard upon poor Max, whose only offense was that he had bidden off Spring Farm to please his sister, but Archie was ready to defend him again.
“If you knew uncle Max,” he said, “you would make him your hero instead of your villain, for a better man never lived. He is kindness itself and the soul of honor. Why, when he was very young he was engaged to a girl who fell from a horse and broke her leg, or her neck, or her back, I’ve forgotten which. Anyhow, she cannot walk and has to be wheeled in a chair, but Max sticks to her like a burr, because he thinks he ought. I am sure I hope he will never marry her.”
“Why not?” Maude asked, and he replied:
“Because, you see, Max has a heap of money, and if he never marries and I outlive him, some of it will come to me. Money is a good thing, I tell you.”
“I didn’t suppose you as mean as that, Archie More! and I hope Mr. Max will marry that broken-backed woman, and that she will live a thousand years! Yes, I do!”