Barclay had been lapsing back into his revery as she spoke, but he pulled himself out and replied: "Oh, yes, Molly—I know about father all right. Can't you make him straighten things out?"
"Well, no. John, that's just it. His money comes in so irregularly, this month a lot and next month nothing, that it just spoils him. When he gets a lot he spends it like a prince," she smiled sadly and interjected: "You know he is forever giving away—and then while he's waiting he gets in debt again. Then we are as poor as the people for whom he passes subscription papers, and that's just what I wanted to see you about."
Barclay took his eyes off Jay Gould's picture long enough to look at the brown-eyed girl with an oval face and a tip of a chin that just fitted the hollow of a man's hand; there were the smallest brown freckles in the world across the bridge of her nose, and under her eyes there was the faintest suggestion of dark shading. Youth was in her lips and cheeks, and when she smiled there were dimples. But John's eyes went back to Jay Gould's solemn black whiskers and he said from his abstraction, "Well, Molly, I wish I could help you."
"Well, I knew you would, John, some way; and oh, John, I do need help so badly." She paused a moment and gazed at him piteously and repeated, "So badly." But his eyes did not move from the sacred whiskers of his joss. The vision was flaming in his brain, and with his lips parted, he whistled "The Evening Star" to conjure it back and keep it with him. The girl went on:—
"About that money Mr. Brownwell loaned father, John." She flushed and cried, "Can't you find some way for father to borrow the money and pay Mr. Brownwell—now that your wheat is turning out so well?"
The young man pulled himself out of his day-dream and said, "Well—why—you see, Molly—I—Well now, to be entirely frank with you, Molly, I'm going into a business that will take all of my credit—and every cent of my money."
He paused a moment, and the girl asked, "Tell me, John, will the wheat straighten things up at the bank?"
"Well, it might if Bob had any sense—but he's got a fool notion of considering a straight mortgage that those farmers gave on their land as rent, and isn't going to make them redeem their land,—his share of it, I mean,—and if he doesn't do that, he'll not have a cent, and he couldn't lend your father any money." Barclay was anxious to get back to his "Evening Star" and his dream of power, so he asked, "Why, Molly, what's wrong?"
"John," she began, "this is a miserable business to talk about; but it is business, I guess." She stopped and looked at him piteously. "Well, John, father's debt to Mr. Brownwell—the ten-thousand-dollar loan on the house—will be due in August." The young man assented. And after a moment she sighed, "That is why I'm to be married in August." She stood a moment looking out of the window and cried, "Oh, John, John, isn't there some way out—isn't there, John?"
Barclay rose and limped to her and answered harshly: "Not so long as Bob is a fool—no, Molly. If he wants to go mooning around releasing those farmers from their mortgages—there's no way out. But I wouldn't care for a man who didn't think more of me than he did of a lot of old clodhoppers."