"Got change for a fifty-dollar bill, Mrs. Maginnis?" said the old gentleman jocosely.
"Yez will have yer joke, now, won't ye, Docthor?" she retorted with gaiety, and tossed her head with the upstanding plumes in a roguish manner. "Niver moind. Some day I'll change ut for yez aisy enough. 'Taint much longer I'll be comin' 'round for me dollar and a half, at all, at all."
"Has Tim got well? Is he going back to work?" asked the doctor, beginning to fish for the required sum amongst the loose silver in his pockets. He spoke of her husband.
Tim was what Doctor Vardaman called a "non-combatant." To say that he was a washerwoman's husband describes him. Who ever heard of a washerwoman with a husband that was worth anything?
"Naw, it ain't that, Docthor," said Mrs. Maginnis, looking momentarily a little dashed. "Naw, Tim's awful bad with rheumatics this spring. But it's meself that's afther ma-akin me fortune in—in stocks. Yez didn't see me in the Turrner Buildin' th' marrnin'?"
Doctor Vardaman's hand paused, rigidly suspended over the money spread on his palm. "What—what's that you say?" he asked abruptly.
"I was goin' to ask yez to spake a wurrd to me characther wid Misther—I mane Meejor Pallinder," went on Mrs. Maginnis, happily unconscious. "But he seemed to be in a hurry, an' says I to meself, 'Betther not worry him, Nora Maginnis. Th' Meejor's thrustin' yez anyhow, an' ye're thrustin' him an' iverythin's fair an' square an' aboveboord. 'Taint as if yez were a gurrl goin' to ta-ake a new pla-ace, ye goose,' says I. So I just held me tongue, an' walked off. It's a grand gintleman th' Meejor is intoirely," she finished enthusiastically.
The doctor looked at her through a mist. "What have you been doing?" he said at last, striving to speak in his natural voice. He might have spared the trouble; Mrs. Maginnis was only too proud and pleased at his interest, at her own importance.
"Ah, thin, I've been investin'—investin' in stocks—or is it shares, I dinnaw?" she said eagerly, lifted her skirt, and drew out a paper, carefully hoarded, from a pocket in her petticoat. She held it toward him. "I got a letther about thim in th' mail, a printed letther, an' ut says: 'Dear Madame, we want to call your attintion——' like that ut begun, Docthor. I can't raymimber th' rest of ut, but yez ought to hear me little Danny, he's got ut by hearrt. Anyway, I was to call on or com-communicate with William Pallinder, Turrner Buildin', like what ut says there. They was iver so many on our sthreet got th' sa—ame, th' Hogans 'crost th' way, an' th' Schwartzes nixt dure but wan, but they ain't anybody wint but me, an' th' Meejor says it's a grreat pity, an' they'll all git left, for they won't be anny more shares or stocks, whichever ut is, sold so low. An' it's just loike pickin' money off of trees, he says, yez git tin for wan. That's four thousan' I'll git, Docthor, for it's four hundred I'm ta-akin out o' th' Buildin' an' Loan, where we been puttin ut for th' last tin years—an' weary wurrk ut is, too, savin' so slow, nothin' loike this, where yez just put in yer money, an' set back an' twiddle yer thumbs! It kapes goin' higher ivery breath yez draw purty near, th' Meejor says. An' whin I give him th' money, he wrote off a grand pa-aper, a receipt, he called ut, an' says he: 'I congrat'late yez, Mrs. Maginnis,' says he. 'It's th' smarrt woman yez arre, an' plucky, too,' says he. 'Nothin' venture, nothin' have, yez may have hearrd th' sayin',' he says. 'That's the way I begun meself,' says he. 'I had just a little, 'twasn't be half so much as yours, an' I put ut in, an' ut kep' a-goin' up an' a-goin' up, an' there I was, like a big fool'—that's what he said, Docthor—'shiverin' an' shakin' an' layin' awake noights, for fear somethin' would happen to ut, an' whin ut doubled, I fair et up th' road gittin to th' office to sell out—an' th' very nixt day it was thribbled already! But I'm all over thim days now,' he says, laughin' that way he has, 'an' yez can see wid wan eye shut how I live, Mrs. Maginnis. Well, all that come from that little lump o' money not be half so big as yours, as I was just afther tellin' yez, an' that's where yez'll be, too, inside of a year, if yez'll be guided by me,' he says. Indade, it's th' foine gintleman he is, an' th' koind man, to be doin' all that for th' loikes of me, an' so I tould him."