"Oh, will you tell me, Del?"
"Well, it is this. How do you think a handsome, a very handsome chess-table would do?"
"Do!—for what?"
"Why,—for my aunt's wedding-gift, you know."
"Oh, that! And you have waked me up, at this time of night, from the nicest dream! You cruel thing!"
"I am so sorry, Laura! But now that you are awake, just tell me how you like the idea;—I won't ask you another word."
"Very well,—very good,—excellent," murmured Laura.
In the course of the next ten minutes, however, I remembered that Laura never played chess, and that I had heard Mr. Sampson say once that he never played now,—that it was too easy for work, and too hard for amusement. So I put the chess-table entirely aside, and began again.
A position for sleep is, unluckily, the one that is sure to keep one awake. Lying down, all the blood in my body kept rushing to my brain, keeping up perpetual images of noun substantives. If I could have spent my fifty dollars in verbs, in taking a journey, in giving a fête champêtre! (Garden lighted with Chinese lanterns, of course,—house covered inside and out with roses.) Things enough, indeed, there were to be bought. But the right thing!
A house, a park, a pair of horses, a curricle, a pony-phaëton. But how many feet of ground would fifty dollars buy?—and scarcely the hoof of a horse.