"Well, it seemed that Mr. Saftleigh had gone out West only six years ago, and had made all his money since, in land and railroad business. Mrs. Saftleigh said that 'whatever Farron touched was sure to double.' She _meant_ money; but I thought of our perplexities when she said it, and he certainly has managed to double _them_. He went to New York two or three times while we were at the Springs; he was transacting railroad business; getting stock taken up in the new piece of road laid out from Latterend to Donnowhair; and he was at the head of a company that had bought up all the land along the route. 'Sure to sell at enormous profits any time after the railroad was opened.' Poor mother got so feverish about it! She didn't see why our little money shouldn't be doubled as well as other people's. And then she cried so about being left a widow, with nobody out in the world to get a share of anything for her; and Mrs. Saftleigh used to tell her that such work was just what friends were made for, and it was so providential that she had met her here just now; and she was always calling her 'sweet Mrs. Argenter.' "Nobody could help it; mother worried herself sick, when I begged her to wait till we could come home and consult some friend we knew. 'The chance would be lost forever,' she said; 'and who could be kinder than the Saftleighs, or could know half so much? Mr. Farron Saftleigh risked his own money in it.' And at last, she wrote home and had her Dorbury mortgage sold, and paid eight thousand dollars of it to Mr. Saftleigh, for shares in the railroad, and land in Donnowhair. And, dear Miss Euphrasia, that is all we've got now, except just a few hundred dollars on deposit in the Continental, and the other four thousand of the mortgage, that mother put into Manufacturers' Insurance stock, to pacify me. If the land _doesn't_ sell out there in six months, as Mr. Saftleigh says it will, I don't know where any more income for us is to come from. "I am saving all I can here, for the winter _must_ cost. You would laugh if you knew how I am saving! I am helping Mrs. Jeffords do her work, and she doesn't charge me any board, and so I lay up the money without letting mother know it. I don't feel as if that were quite right,--or comfortable, at least; but after all, why shouldn't she be cheated a little bit the other way, if it is possible? That is why I hope we shall be here all through October.