“How much property have you?” “My father left me something over thirty-one thousand dollars.” “Thirty-one from one hundred and four leaves seventy-three.” “And interest,” I corrected. “I thought that was what you were driving at,” he surmised calmly. He pulled out a volume from its repository in his desk, and turned backwards and forwards in the book for a few moments, taking off figures on a sheet of paper. “Eight years at five per cent makes the whole over one hundred and fifty-five thousand dollars less thirty-one.” “Thank you.” “Where can you get the balance?” “I must earn it.” He looked at me with a slightly quizzical expression and asked, “How?” “That I have yet to think out.” “Any business?” “I have the offer of a professorship at Leipzig, but that’s out of the question now.” “Why?” “It would give me only two thousand a year at first, and the interest on the debt will be over six thousand annually.” “What do you know?” he questioned. “Most of the languages and dialects of Europe and Asia, and a good deal of history and ethnology. I am fairly read in arts, sciences, and religions, and I know something of writing,” I answered, smiling at the absurdity of mentioning such knowledge in the face of such a condition. “Humph! And you’d have sold all that for two thousand a year?” “I think so.” “Well, that only proves that a man had better cultivate his gumption, and not his brains!” “If he wishes to make money,” I could not help retorting gently. “You’re just like Maizie!” he sniffed, and his going back to your familiar name in my presence was the best compliment he could have paid me. “You two ought to have died young and gone to heaven, where there’s nothing to do but cultivate the soul.” “I wish we had!” “Why don’t you go to your mother?” “For what?” “For the money.” “Has she money?” “Yes. She had a little money when she married your father, which she kept tight hold of; her mother’s death, two years ago, gave her more, and she has just married a rich man.” “I don’t know yet what I shall do,” I replied, rising. “Well,” he advised kindly, “before you blow your brains out or do anything else that’s a waste of good material, come and see me again.” “Thank you,” I responded. “And, Mr. Blodgett, as a favor, I ask that all I have told you, and even my presence in New York, shall be confidential between us.” “Nonsense!” he growled. “I shall tell Maizie all about it.” “Miss Walton least of any,” I begged. “Why don’t you insist, too, that Mrs. Blodgett, who intends that I shall inform her nightly of everything I know, sha’n’t be told?” he queried. “It grieves me to be a marplot of connubial confidences,” I rejoined, responding to his smile, “but this must be between us.” “Have your own way,” he acceded, and then laughed. “I’ll have a good time over it, for I’ll let Mrs. Blodgett see there is a secret, and she’ll go crazy trying to worm it out of me.”