Too proud to admit such was the case, Lorraine had sensibly set to work to be as useful as any minister’s daughter ought to be in a small town, and if she had her own particular form of heartache when she saw Dan and Thurley walking or riding together or taking supper at the Hotel Button, she kept it well concealed and smiled upon them and every one else alike.
After Dan had been “learning” for two years, while his father bragged that his son would outrival college professors—and all by mail, too—the older Birge died from an apoplectic stroke, leaving Dan his heir with the flourishing tavern, blacksmith’s shop and real estate office to take in hand.
This was the only time that Dan had been known to consult any one—and every one knew Thurley had put him up to doing it, to say nothing of his being under age—but he went to the minister and they had a long talk, after which a sign “Closed” was across the saloon doorway, and carpenters came from out of town to make the place over into such a store as the Corners had never dreamed of possessing.
“My father was an honest saloon keeper, I guess,” Dan had told Thurley, “but that business don’t suit me—nor you,” he added tenderly. “I’m going to keep a dry goods store that will curdle all the milk in the South Wales emporium. I’m eighteen, Thurley, and when I’m twenty-one and rid of trustees, I’ll ask you to marry me, and, when I’m twenty-two, we’ll be married.”
At which Thurley, admiring his audacity, had waived the question and began to suggest what lines of goods had best be carried.
It was only natural that the older generation could not understand a modern youth who would pay ten hard-earned dollars for a bull puppy, and then name her Zaza and pay two dollars more for a brass-studded collar and be willing to settle all claims for partially chewed up rubbers or boots for which the said Zaza seemed to have a penchant!
Neither did they see the necessity of Dan’s trips to New York to buy goods. Submit Curler had never done it, and, if one could “learn by mail,” why not buy as well? Nor did they see the reason for Dan’s red and white canoe, the “Water Demon,” fitted with an awning and striped cushions and a thirty-five dollar talking machine in the center of it, and why, when every one ought to be at work, Dan and Thurley would drift along the lake to the tune of “Dearie” or “Are You Coming Out To-night, Mary Ann?” while Zaza, unasked guest, would swim out and try to upset the cargo. And when Dan engaged two rooms and had a _private bathroom_ installed at the Hotel Button and built a small balcony opening out of his sitting room, the younger generation fell down and worshipped blindly, while the older generation said a Birge never “built a cupola no place without wanting to get out on it and look down on every one,” and, “there was as much sense in all his notions as there would be in putting a deaf mute at a telephone switchboard.”