“Oh, mortgages aren’t at all serious—not necessarily fatal—if you don’t take cold or expose yourself before it’s over.”
“How does one contract a mortgage?” said Zelda. “Are there microbes?”
“I caught mine at college,” said Olive. “We blew our substance on education. I just found it out recently. Mother has been carrying the burden of it all by herself. The subject isn’t pleasant. Let us talk of something else.”
“Where do you keep your mortgage?” asked Zelda, half-seriously. “How does one get at the beast?”
“Ours seems to be in a bank just at present,” answered Olive, evasively.
“That sounds formidable. But it’s too bad that you have to move. Harrison Street is the most charming street in town. I can’t think of you as living anywhere else except in this pretty house.”
“You’ll have to, for we move almost at once, as they say in stories.”
Zelda’s father continued to pay a sum every month to her credit at the bank, and money matters were rarely or never mentioned between them. She did not understand how anxious he was to avoid any clash with Rodney Merriam over the management of her property; and she did not appreciate the smallness of the sum he gave her compared with the full amount her property should have earned. Zelda was spoken of in Mariona as an heiress, and it was the general belief that she would have not only the property left her by her mother, but the large estate which Ezra Dameron had been accumulating through many years. There, too, were Mrs. Forrest and Rodney Merriam, who were childless; both were rich by local standards.
When, one afternoon a week later, she decided to speak to her father about Olive’s perplexity, she went to his office in the Dameron Block and made no effort to conceal the fact that she had come on business. Her father was poring over his accounts as she stood suddenly on the threshold of the private room.
“Why, Zee, what brings you here?” he exclaimed.