Miss Dividends: A NovelGunter, Archibald Clavering
General
Miss Dividends: A Novel
Gunter, Archibald Clavering
Latter Day Saints -- Fiction
"Belcher!" cries Lawrence. "Good Heavens! I've got two hundred shares of
that stock in my pocketbook, and have forgotten all about it!"
"Oh!" says Erma, "that was the stock you had when you first heard that I
was Bishop Tranyon's daughter--and you forgot your investment for me!"
"Well, Providence has rewarded him for it, for I think Belcher must be
up to a thousand dollars a share, by this time!" laughs Ralph.
And telegraphing San Francisco, Lawrence finds this is the fact, and
sells out his Belcher stock for something over eleven hundred dollars a
share, making nearly two hundred thousand dollars by the transaction.
"Luck is upon you, young man!" says the ex-bishop. "Your election comes
up at the Unity Club to-morrow. I've no doubt you'll go in--but that
Oliver Livingston may give you trouble."
"Oh, I think not!" cries Erma, "his mother has been so very kind to me,
as, in fact, have all my old friends."
For some rumors of the peculiar adventures that have made Miss Travenion
Mrs. Lawrence have got into circulation, and in them Harry has been made
a Western hero and a frontier demi-god. Besides, society is generally
very nice to a young and beautiful woman who has sixty thousand a year
of her own, a rich husband, and richer father, and who is going to have
a fine mansion on Fifth Avenue, and give many dinner parties and a
german or two each season.
"I differ with you, my dear," returns Ralph. "Oliver Livingston is an
infamous cad."
"Why, what has he done now?" asks Lawrence, noting the excitement in his
father-in-law's manner.
"What has he done?" cries Travenion. "The miserable sneak has told in
the Unity the story of the Mormon club man--the story I risked my life
to originate. I told it to-day with graphic elaboration, and Larry Jerry
and the rest only half smiled, and said they believed Mr. Livingston had
told them that yarn about a month ago. I shall never tell it again!"
"Don't!" cries his daughter. "Don't make me ashamed of you." Then she
says more calmly: "What have you done about your families out there?"
"Oh, they're provided for _well_!" remarks Ralph. "I believe one of
them, the genuine Mrs. Travenion"--he winces a little at the
title--"would have made me trouble, but I think the Church instructed
her to let me alone; I know a few secrets of theirs that make them quite
amiable to me, now I'm out of their clutches. Their delegate to
congress, the one who has four wives in Utah, and declares he is not a
polygamist in Washington, might not like me to explain what I know of
his large family," chuckles the old gentleman.
But for all this, he does not tell the story of Bishop Tranyon, the New
York dandy, very often.
His guess about Oliver Livingston, however, was a shrewd one. For
chancing to be on the Governing Committee of the Unity when Lawrence's
name comes up for membership, he sneaks in a black-ball, as many another
prig and coward, from envy and malice and uncharitableness, has done
before, and will do to come.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account