“Yes, yes, you must go to Paris,” Margaret said. “I have more money than I need. Dora, surely you would not refuse to let me—”
“Oh, no, no, no!” Dora cried out. “I couldn't think of it. What is done must be done by me, by my brain, and by my hands. God will surely let me atone in that way for my mistake. It is what I have prayed for night and day all these years, and the reward surely can't be far off.” She forced a wan smile to her rigid face, and added: “Then, like the Arabs, some night we'll fold our tents and silently steal away from old Stafford. Only the grocer-boy and the postman will know, at first, and then the last chapter of our life here will be written. It seems sad, doesn't it?—but it is sweet, so very, very sweet and soothing.”
Margaret was crying. Without a word, she kissed Dora and went out. But she did not return home at once. She kept on down the little street on which the cottage stood till she came to another which led to the square.
She passed the stores, bowing to an acquaintance in a doorway or in a passing carriage, and went on to Walton's bank.
“Is Mr. Walton in?” she asked Toby Lassiter, at the cashier's window in the green wire grating.
“He has just this minute stepped out,” Toby answered. “He will be right in. Won't you go to his office and wait?”
“Thank you, yes,” she answered, and went back to the musty little room, taking a chair near the old man's desk.
Without a moment's delay, Toby grabbed his hat and went out in the street. He found the banker lounging around Pete Longley's grocery store, where he had an attentive audience. Toby knew better than to interrupt the old man when he was talking, so he waited for Walton to finish his remarks, which, judging by the steady gleam of the banker's eye, had some underlying motive; and, considering the fact that Pete was a noted gossip, Toby decided that his employer was simply and deliberately setting afloat certain reports that would be on every lip before nightfall.
“Oh yes,” Toby heard him saying, “I never was a man to let my right hand know what my left was doing in any deal whatsoever, and so, all this time, I have kept my own counsel in regard to where Fred was at, and why—why I sent him out there. He invested some of the scads that is coming to him in that big boom town and turned his money over as fast as a dog can trot. Boys, I'm actually ashamed to tell you fellows how rich he really is. I reckon you'd get an idea of how he's fixed if I was to say he has made more since he left here than I've raked and scraped together all my life.”
“You don't say!” Pete Longley exclaimed. “Well, that certainly is fine. I reckon he did it through his popularity. I never knew a chap that had as many friends.”