One could have heard a pin drop. Each of the sisters was tremulous to know what was coming next. Could he possibly be meditating purse-proud opposition? The Ripley blue blood simmered at the thought, and Miss Rebecca, nervous in her turn, tapped the ground lightly with her foot.
“The day I was first here,” he resumed, “you ladies taught me a lesson. I believed then that money could command anything. I discovered that I was mistaken. It provoked me, but it set me thinking. I’ve learned since that the almighty dollar cannot buy gentle birth and—and the standards which go with it.”
Unexpectedly edifying as this admission was, his listeners sought in vain to connect it with the immediate issue, and consequently forebore to speak.
“The only return I can make for opening my eyes to the real truth is by doing what I guess you would do if you or one of your folk were in my shoes. I’m a very rich man, as you know. If your niece marries my son her children will never come to want in their time. He’s a good boy, if I do say it; and I should be mighty proud of her.”
Miss Carry breathed a gentle sigh of relief at this last avowal.
“I don’t want her to marry him, though, without knowing the truth, and perhaps when you hear it you’ll decide that she must give him up.”
Thereupon Mr. Anderson blew his nose by way of gathering his faculties for the crucial words as a carter rests his horse before mounting the final hill when the sledding is hard.
“I’m going to tell you how I made my first start. I was a clerk in a bank and sharp as a needle in forecasting what was going to happen downtown. I used to say to myself that if I had capital it would be easy to make money breed money. Well, one day I borrowed from the bank, without the bank’s leave, $3,000 in order to speculate. I won on that deal and the next and the next. Then I was able to return what I’d borrowed and to set up in a small way for myself in the furniture business. That was my start, ladies—the nest-egg of all I’ve got.”
He sat back in his chair and passed his handkerchief across his forehead like one who has performed with credit an agonizing duty.
There was silence for a moment. Unequivocal as the confession was, Miss Rebecca, reluctant to believe her ears, asked with characteristic bluntness: