"And so Uncle Zabdiel thinks I have a poor name?" said I, laughing heartily. "The shield looks neither gold nor silver, from which side soever we gaze. But I think he might put up with my name!"
My husband never knew exactly what I was laughing at. And why should he? I was fast overcoming my weakness about names, and thinking they were nothing, compared to things, after all.
When our laugh (for his was sympathetic) had subsided into a quiet cheerfulness, he said, again holding up his hand,—
"Not at all curious, Del? You don't ask what Mr. Solitude Drake wanted?"
"I don't think I care what he wanted: company, I suppose."
And I went on making bad puns about solitude sweetened, and ducks and drakes, as happy people do, whose hearts are quite at ease.
"And you don't want to know at all, Del?" said he, laughing a little nervously, and dropping from his hand an open paper into mine. "It shall be my wedding-present to you. It is Mr. Drake's retainer. Pretty stout one, is it not? This is what made me jump out of the window,—this and one other thing."
"Why, this is a draft for five hundred dollars!" said I, reading and staring stupidly at the paper.
"Yes, and I am retained in that great Albany land-case. It involves millions of property. That is all, Del. But I was so glad, so happy, that I was likely to do well at last, and that I could gratify all the wishes, reasonable and unreasonable, of my darling!"
"Is it a good deal?" said I, simply; for, after all, five hundred dollars did not seem such an Arabian fortune.