“And so it will be in a minute, mother. That isn’t half of it. Look at this, and this.” He threw down two long envelopes filled with documents. “There’s notes of Colonel Lane, the millionaire mining magnate of California, for about seventy thousand dollars, and there’s the papers that show I am a quarter owner in the richest placer mine in all Alaska.”
His father’s eyes gleamed as he looked carefully at these papers, and Harry gave his mother a hug that he must surely have learned of the polar bears up at Point Lay.
“Mother,” he said, “when I was a little fellow” (you would have thought him at least thirty now to hear that, though not to see him), “you used to fry doughnuts for me and make one that was like a man. I want you to fry me two now, big ones, and make ’em twins. That’s Joe and me up at Candle Creek.”
Harry caught up his mother in his arms and danced a wild whirl about the room, finally seating her breathless and laughing on the sofa, while his father looked on with pride in his face and two tears shining on his cheeks. No one but he knew what a load the tidings of good fortune had lifted from his shoulders. With ample capital he would show the business world what the house of Desmond could do. The stoop was out of his shoulders again and Harry knew it, and would have gone through every hardship of the two years again for the sight.
Supper was announced before they had done talking over this glorious news, and Harry was not so excited but that he did full justice to home cooking. In the evening there came a ring at the doorbell, and Mr. and Mrs. Adams came in—and Maisie.
“Well,” Mr. Adams said, “you went away a boy and you have come back a man grown. If being lost in the Arctic for two years or so will give people such size and rugged health as that, I should advise it for lots of them.”
Harry blushed and stammered at the sight of Maisie. She had grown up too, he thought, and how lovely she was! As for Maisie, she was cordially glad to see him, but as demure about it as the most proper young lady should be. Only when she went away she glanced up at him shyly and said,—
“Did you bring me that aurora borealis that you promised me the last thing when you went away?”
Then indeed Harry found his tongue, though he blushed in the saying. “You are like the aurora yourself. Come sailing with me to-morrow, will you not?”
Maisie blushed too, as who would not at so direct a compliment from a handsome, broad-shouldered young man.