thing for you, young man; and you certainly ought to give extra thanks that you came out alive to enjoy it all. Properly managed, your property ought to keep you on Easy Street for the rest of your life, and then some. [152] “I took pains to let Mr. Harrower know how the wind blew when I paid him the money you had borrowed from him. He certainly was one surprised man; and of course I don’t speak officially, but from what he said I should judge that this might make a big difference with Miss Elinore. So you better hurry home, old man, and get busy. The sun is shining, and the war is over. “Yours fraternally as well as officially, “Yours fraternally as well as officially, “Arthur J. Watkins.” Arthur J. Watkins [153]Over the first part of the letter Lyman Gage dallied comfortably as he might have done with his grapefruit or the chicken on toast that they had promised him for lunch. He had lost his sense of world values for the time being, and just now a fortune was no more than a hot-water bag when one’s feet were cold. It merely gave him a sense that he needn’t be in a hurry getting well, that he could take things easy because he could pay for everything and give his friends a good time after he was on his feet again. In short, he was no longer a beggar on Miss Marilla’s bounty with only a thousand dollars between him and debt or even the poorhouse. [153] But, when he came to that last paragraph, his face suddenly hardened, and into his eyes there came a glint of steel as of old, while his jaw set sternly, and[154] lines came around his mouth, hard, bitter lines. [154] So it was that that had been the matter with Elinore, was it? She had not grown tired of him so much, but had wanted more money than she thought he would be able to furnish for a long time? He stared off into the room not seeing its cozy details for the first time since he began to get well. He was looking at the vision of the past trying to conjure up a face whose loveliness had held for him no imperfections. He was looking at it squarely now as it rose dimly in vision against the gray of Miss Marilla’s spare-room wall; and for the first time he saw the petted under lip with the selfish droop at its corners, the pout when she could not have her own way, the frown of the delicate brows, the petulant tapping
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