"What's the use, indeed?" said the husband in a saddened tone. "If one heed not the voice of the past twenty-four hours—" He left the sentence unfinished.
"Oh, I know. Everybody, the world over, will be preaching about Chicago. She was so wicked. Sodom and Gomorrah and Babylon! That'll be the talk. I suppose we shall be told ten thousand times that riches have wings—just as though we hadn't seen the wings and couldn't swear to the color of them. But, dear me! I've been thinking that your story of losses by the fire is not worth telling. I wish to goodness we'd bought the house. If you hadn't lost the money, we might have now a respectable-sized story to tell of our losses. I shall be ashamed to tell that we lost just some clothes and household traps, when some people have lost millions. How much better it would sound to say that our house and everything in it was burned! People wouldn't know but it was a fifty-thousand-dollar house. But a few chairs and bedquilts!—it's too small to talk about."
"We've lost enough to satisfy me," said the doctor. "All my practice that I've been ten years in building up! I'm exactly where I was when I began in Chicago. We own but five dollars in the world—haven't even a change of clothes."
"I've a mind to say that we had just bought the house, and it was burned," said Mrs. Lively. "I'm sure it was just the same. But then you never would stand by me in the story: you'd be sure to let the cat out."
"But what good would come of such a story?" asked the doctor.
"Why, people would be so much sorrier for us. Nobody could feel sorry for that old pop-corn woman you were talking to, even if she did lose all she had; and just so it will be with us. It's just like you to be always missing a good thing. If you'd only bought the house before you lost the money!"
"You're determined to saddle the loss of that money on me," the doctor said smiling.
"Well, who lost it if you didn't?"
"I'm sure I can't say."
"Of course you can't. You might as well say that black isn't black as that you didn't lose that money."