Captain Mayo became promptly silent, crestfallen, and embarrassed. He stared aft, he looked at the splendid yacht whose finances he managed and whose extravagance he knew. He saw the girl at his side, and blinked at the gems which flashed in the sunlight as her fingers tucked up the locks of hair where the breeze had wantoned.
“I think my father works because he loves it,” she said. “I wish he would rest and enjoy other things more. If mother had lived to influence him perhaps he would see something else in life instead of merely piling up money. But he doesn't listen to me. He gives me money and tells me to go and play. I miss my mother, boy! I haven't anybody to talk with—who understands!”
There were tears in her eyes, and he was grateful for them. He felt that she had depths in her nature. But keen realization of his position, compared with hers, distressed him. She stood there, luxury incarnate, mistress of all that money could give her.
“Anybody can make money,” she declared. “My father and those men are sitting there and building plans to bring them thousands and thousands of dollars. All they need to do is put their heads together and plan. Every now and then I hear a few words. They're going to own all the steamboats—or something of that kind. Anybody can make money, I say, but there are so few who know how to enjoy it.”
“I have been doing a lot of thinking since last night—Alma.” He hesitated when he came to her name, and then blurted it out.
“Do you think it is real lover-like to treat my name as if it were a hurdle that you must leap over?” she asked, with her aggravating little chuckle. “Oh, you have so much to learn!”
“I'm afraid so. I have a great many things ahead of me to learn and do. I have been thinking. I have been afraid of the men who sit and scheme and put all their minds on making money. They did bitter things to us, and we didn't understand until it was all over. But I must go among them and watch them and learn how to make money.”
“Don't be like the others, now, and talk money—money,” she said, pettishly. “Money and their love-affairs—that's the talk I have heard from men ever since I was allowed to come into the drawing-room out of the nursery!”
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