As usual she fell back upon her own experience for wisdom, and drew a shrewd and humorous sketch of one of her episodic emergences into wealth.
"Bundy was really rich that time," she remarked. "He'd struck oil in Texas, and had only to sit still and let the oil work for him. It was good fun at first. We took a big house at Kensington, and Bundy spent his time getting cheated over horses, and I spent mine being cheated over sham Sheraton furniture, and when we tired of that we bought pictures, until at last the house was so full of things we couldn't get another stick into it. 'What shall we do now?' says Bundy. 'Let us try being fashionable,' says I." [She uttered the word "fash-ee-on-abell," with an indescribable drawling accent of contempt.] "So we tried that, too, and drove in the Park, and gave dinner-parties, and Bundy had to wear dress-clothes, though he never could make out how to tie his white tie, and made more fuss than enough of it. We got plenty of folk to eat our dinners, but a duller lot I never met. The men all wanted to talk oil, and the women couldn't talk of anything but dress, and men and women alike hung round Bundy, and let him know as plainly as they dared that all they came for was to see if they could get any oil-shares out of him. After a time we grew tired of being fashionable, and Bundy says, 'I think we'll have a yacht.' So we bought a yacht, though neither of us liked the sea, and we made out a summer that way. And all the while the oil was pouring out of those wells in Texas, and the money was pouring in, and we saw no end to it. Then Bundy tried being a philanthropist, and that was really interesting while it lasted. There wasn't a crank in London—nor, one would suppose, in Europe, from the look of his mail-bag—that didn't find him out. They sat upon his doorstep to catch him coming out, and hunted him down the street, and all the men he'd ever known anywhere claimed him as an old friend, so that the poor man lived the life of a partridge on the mountains, as the saying is. He grew quite old-looking, and lost his sleep, and after a time he didn't even read what the papers said about him, which is a pretty bad sign in a man."
"Poor Mr. Bundy!" said Arthur, in mock commiseration.
"Ah! you may well say it, laddie, and poor Mrs. Bundy, too, for I'd never been so miserable in my life. You see, it was the dullness of the thing that made us miserable. When you can get everything you want, you don't want anything after a time."
"And how did it end?"
"Well, one morning I lay a-bed late, for there was nothing particular to get up for, and I could hear Bundy in his dressing-room, opening and shutting drawers, as though he couldn't make up his mind what clothes he wanted to wear. There came a knock on the outer door, and I heard a crumpling of paper, and then he whistled.
"'What is it?' I called out.
"He didn't answer, but I heard him rampaging round. So I jumped out of bed, and ran into the dressing-room, and there stood Bundy laughing to himself, and upon my word he looked happier than I had seen him for twelve months or more.
"'What is it?' I says again.
"And then he looked at me mighty solemn and queer, and says, 'Can ye bear it?'