“Certainly,” cried Farebrother, laughing still. “It’s his own peculiar Romainesque way of giving Miss Maywood warning. Pray pardon me for hinting such a thing, but Miss Maywood herself has acted with such delicious candor about the whole matter that it’s absurd to pretend ignorance. Now what a devilish revenge the old Mephistopheles took!”
Farebrother seemed so carried away by his enjoyment of Mr. Romaine’s tactics in giving Miss Maywood the slip that Letty was quite offended with him for his lack of interest in her side of the case. But at last he condescended to be serious. It was a soft and lovely autumn afternoon, the red sun slanting upon the straggling woods, and making golden vistas through the trees. It was hushed and still. It had rained that day, and the air was filled with the aromatic odor of the dead, wet leaves. Farebrother had remained seated on the log to have his laugh out, but Letty had got up and was standing over him in an indignant attitude, one hand thrust in the pocket of her natty jacket, while with the other she grasped firmly the brim of her large black hat, under which her eyes shone with a peculiar, soft splendor. Farebrother thought then that he had never seen her pale, piquant beauty to greater advantage.
“But if you could for one moment take your mind off Miss Maywood, and consider my grievances,” said she, tartly. “Can you imagine anything more odious? Here is Mr. Romaine pretending—for I don’t believe it’s anything but that he is trying to make a fool of me—pretending, I say, that he means to leave me a fortune some day—and he is just perverse enough to ignore any objection I may make, not only to his plans, but to himself—for I assure you, I really dislike him, although I pity him, too. Then suppose he dies and does leave me the money! You never heard of such tribes of poor relations as he has, in your life, and all of them, as grandpapa says, have counted on Mr. Romaine’s money for forty years. He has one niece—as poor as poverty, with nine—shoeless—hatless—shabby children—who has actually condescended to beg for help from him—and what do you think she will say of me when the truth comes out? And there are whole regiments of nephews—and cousins galore—and the entire family are what grandpapa calls ‘litigious’—they’d rather go to law than not—oh, I can shut my eyes and see the way these people will hound me for that money, that after all should be theirs.”
Farebrother was grave enough now. He rose and went and stood by her.
“Money, my dear Miss Corbin, is like electricity or steam, or any other great force—it is dangerous when it is unmanageable. However,” he said, lightly, “as I’ve had to part with some lately, I’ve had to call up all the old saws against it that I could think of.”
“But I don’t believe you are very sorry about your money.”
“Sorry? Then you don’t know me. I experienced the keenest regret when I discovered that, according to my father’s will, I came out at the little end of the horn in the event of disaster, because, as the dear old gentleman said, I was well able to take care of myself. Of course I said the handsome thing—when the crash came—especially to Colonel Corbin, who would have kicked me out of his house if I hadn’t—but I assure you I didn’t feel in spirits for a whole week after the financial earthquake.”
Letty looked at him smiling. She was not a bad judge of human nature and much shrewder than she looked, and she read Farebrother like an open book—and liked the volume.
“But then, your profession?”
“Oh, yes, my profession. Well, the first thing that cheered my gloom was when I got a contract for an eight-story granite business building. I met on the street that very day the fellow I told you of once—a clever architect, but who has a wife and an army of children on him, and who always looked at me reproachfully in the old days when we met—and I had the satisfaction of telling him that it was work or starvation with me now—and he spoke out the thought I had read so often in his mind before—‘It’s all right now, but when I saw you driving those thoroughbreds round the Park, in that imported drag of yours, and heard of you buying the pick of the pictures at the exhibition, while I had seven children to bring up and educate on my earnings, it did seem deuced hard that you should enter into competition with us poor devils.’ So I reminded him that the thoroughbreds and the pictures and a few other things were going under the hammer, and the wretch actually grinned. But I’ll tell you what I have found out lately—that there’s such a thing as good fellowship in the world. There isn’t any among rich men. They are all bent on amusing themselves or being amused. They are so perfectly independent of each other that there isn’t any room for sentiment—while among poorer men they are all interdependent. They have to help each other along in pleasures and work, and that sort of thing—and that’s why it is that comradeship exists among them as it cannot exist among the rich.”