"Ha," said the Professor, "that would mean the disposition of all the shares. But I don't see why they call my friend a mystery. A man comes into the neighborhood and goes to work. Is there anything so mysterious about that? It would be more of a mystery if he lived without work."
"Father sometimes fails to catch the atmosphere of a situation," said the girl, giving Milford a smile not so narrow and not so dry with irony. "One's appearance might have something to do with the estimate formed of him," she continued.
"The hired man marches from the east to the west and back again," said Milford. "And I am a hired man—hired by myself to do something, and I am going to do it," he added with a tightening of his face.
"But that mysterious something?" queried the girl. "What is it?"
"To make money," he answered. "Simmer it down and that's all there is to life."
In her heart she agreed with him, but she took issue. She said that there was something better than money. He asked if it were an old mill, and they laughed themselves into better acquaintance.
"It would be well to sit here," said the Professor to Milford, "but I want you to go up to my work shop with me. I wish to show you something."
As Milford arose to follow him, he thought that on the woman's face he saw a sneer at "work shop," and he felt that she and her daughter had learned to look upon it as an idle corner, full of useless lumber. The schemes of this ducking failure of a man were not of serious interest to them. His readiness to talk made him seem light of purpose, and a sigh that came from his heart might have been an unuttered word breathed upon the air, a word in excuse of his poverty.
Milford was conducted to an upper room, furnished with two chairs, a worn carpet and a table. But the Professor entered it reverently, as if it were the joss-house of hope. He turned down his light to steady the flame, placed the lamp upon the table, motioned his visitor to a chair, sat down, drew a pile of papers toward him, and said: "My dear fellow, I think I have something here that will tide me over the quarterly rapids. I believe that among these sheets lie a life insurance premium of ninety-seven dollars and forty cents. I want you to hear it, and then I will steal it forth to that woman. Now, in writing for a professional man, a physician, we will say, you must of all things employ sky-scraping terms. Medicine has no use for the simple. I wanted to start off with a cloud-capped sentence, a quotation, and here is one I found in Hazlett, referring to old Sir Thomas Brown: 'He scooped an antithesis from fabulous antiquity and raked up an epithet from the sweepings of chaos.' Isn't that a wild pigeon with the sun on its back?"
"Yes, I know, but what has it to do with an article on medicine?"