“Well, let ’em wait a year,—wait six months,—and they’ll whistle a different tune. But you,” Wilbur looked at her with frank admiration, the first time he had done so without other preoccupation. He had all along taken it for granted that she was “a live girl,” as he would have called her in Michigan. Now she appeared to him as more than that; she was as full of venture, as keenly alive, as he, besides being competent in the woman’s part of knowing how to dress and to talk entertainingly on many topics. He appreciated the fact that she had been able to handle both him and Erard impartially. As they talked over the last details,—he was to leave that night for Southampton,—the idea of her courage and her cleverness brought out his admiration increasingly. She seemed to have mastered the fine details of the irrigation problem. She knew as well as he the ins and outs of Dinsmore’s character, and she gave him shrewd advice how to play his cards.
When all was talked out, Wilbur found it difficult to make the good-by. He was anxious to express many shades of feeling at once, and he felt incapable of the necessary delicacy.
“You have been a sandy friend,” he began.
“Stop,” she laughed. “Remember I am a partner, and we mustn’t have any sentiment.”
“That’s all right,” he rose to her point, “but if I need another spur in my side I’ve got it; and when we’ve made the game, I shall know who gave me the boost at the right moment.”
“And I—who made life interesting when it began to hang heavy; and to whom I owe my princely fortune!”
A woman could be very chummy with Wilbur without opening the way to emotional complexities. His education in a part of the world where women are accepted as comrades (with certain advantages of sex) made him companionable. He had always acted with young women on a frankly human basis at home, or in his university; he had seen so little of them in the conventional attitude that he was never the lover. Nevertheless, this good-by included long pauses. At last he said,—
“When the stock is selling at one twenty-five you will see me again. Not before. And,” he proceeded slowly, “then I shall have another scheme to propose.”
Miss Anthon was vexed with herself at her sudden blush.
“I haven’t any business to be talking now about—well— I can’t help, though, letting you know how it stands.”