“Frightens you?” he queried, with a kind of jovial tenderness, as she got to her feet; “frightens you, eh? Why, within a month's time, old lady, you'll be riding in the Park in your own carriage, with niggers folding their arms up behind, and you'll be taking it all as easy and as natural as if you'd been born in a barouche.”
He added, in response to the enquiry of her lifted brows: “Barouche? That's what we'd call in England a landau.”
She stood with a foot upon the fender, her tired, passive face inclined meditatively, her rusty old black gown drawn back by one hand from the snapping sparks. “No,” she said, slowly, joyless resignation mingling with pride in her voice. “I was born here over the shop.”
“Well, good God! so was I,” he commented, lustily. “But that's no reason why I shouldn't wind up in Park Lane--or you either.”
She had nothing to say to this, apparently. After a little, she seated herself again, drawing her chair closer to the hearth. “It's years since I've lit this fire before the first of November,” she remarked, with the air of defending the action to herself.
“Oh, we're celebrating,” he said, rubbing his hands over the reluctant blaze. “Everything goes, tonight!”
Her face, as she looked up at him, betrayed the bewilderment of her mind. “You set out to tell me what it was all about,” she reminded him. “You see I'm completely in the dark. I only hear you say that you've made a great fortune. That's all I know. Or perhaps you've told me as much as you care to.”
“Why, not at all,” he reassured her, pulling his own chair toward him with his foot, and sprawling into it with a grunt of relief. “If you'll draw me a glass of that beer of yours, I'll tell you all about it. It's not a thing for everybody to know, not to be breathed to a human being, for that matter--but you'll enjoy it, and it'll be safe enough with you.”
As she rose, and moved toward a door, he called merrily after her: “No more beer when that keg runs dry, you know. Nothing but champagne!”
THORPE took a long, thoughtful pull at the beer his sister brought him.
“Ah, I didn't know I was so thirsty,” he said, when he put the glass down. “Truth is--I've lost track of myself altogether since--since the big thing happened. I seem to be somebody else--a comparative stranger, so to speak. I've got to get acquainted with myself, all over again. You can't imagine what an extraordinary feeling it is--this being hit every few minutes with the recollection that you're worth half a million. It's like being struck over the head. It knocks you down. There are such thousands of things to do--you dance about, all of a flutter. You don't know where to begin.”