The doctor was chuckling. “I hope they’ll take your word for it! . . . We may be immortal for all I know. But if we are, I see no reason why cats and chickens should not be. In the dissecting room they’re very much like men.”
“They are; they must be! Though not as individuals. The death of a man or the death of a cat simply scatters so many units of vitality in other directions! Tiens! when our dam broke, up at the canyon, all the electric lights went out. That was the death of our little lighting plant. But the water power that generated our current is still there, immortal, even if the water is rushing off in a direction that doesn’t happen to light our lamps, a direction that makes Keble grieve and Mr. Brown swear. . . . That’s a rock on which Keble and I have often split. I think he sincerely believes he’s going to a sort of High Church heaven, intact except for his clothes and his prayer-book. I wish I could believe something as naïve as that.”
“Pas vrai! You are too fond of free speculation, like your poor Papa. . . . And now, those dollars in the bank?”
“Oh, I was just wondering. . . . Besides, you never can tell, I might decide to run off some day and improve my education.”
Her father shot a look of inquiry across the table, but her face was impassive. “You’re not exactly ignorant; and certainly not stupid.”
She laughed. “Ah ça! . . . Will you please get me a cheque book the next time you call at the bank?”
The next morning Louise passed in helping Nana dust and straighten the accumulation of books and knick-knacks in the house. She relieved the old servant by preparing luncheon herself, and the doctor arrived from the little brown shingled hospital opposite the cement and plaster bank to rejoin her, bringing with him a new cheque book, which she carelessly thrust into the pocket of her riding breeches.
“What a sensible Papa you are, not to warn me against extravagance!”
“I’ve never doubted you, my child. It’s not likely I shall commence now. You might have gone far if you hadn’t decided to marry; I always maintained that. As it is, you made a match that no other girl in the Valley could have done,—though I for one never guaranteed it would be successful.”
“Hein ça!” she mocked, absent-mindedly. “I’ve made an omelette that no other girl in the Valley could have done, and it’s too successful for words. Keble is upset for days if he catches me in my own kitchen.”