What will happen? I'll wake up in a cool, beautiful brass bed, won't I--with cretonne window-curtains, and salt air blowing them about, and a maid to bring me coffee. And instead of a bathroom like yours, next to an elevator shaft and a fire-escape, I'll have one as big as a church, and the whole blue ocean to swim in. And I'll sit on the rocks in the sunshine and watch the waves and the yachts--""And grow well again!" cried Carter. "But you'll write to me," he added wistfully, "every day, won't you?"In her wrath, Dolly rose, and from across the table confronted him.
"And what will I be doing on those rocks?" she cried. "You KNOWwhat I'll be doing! I'll be sobbing, and sobbing, and calling out to the waves: 'Why did he send me away? Why doesn't he want me?
Because he doesn't love me. That's why! He doesn't LOVE me!' And you DON'T!" cried Dolly. "you DON'T!"It took him all of three minutes to persuade her she was mistaken.
"Very well, then," sobbed Dolly, "that's settled. And there'll be no more talk of sending me away!
"There will NOT!" said Champneys hastily. "We will now," he announced, "go into committee of the whole and decide how we are to face financial failure. Our assets consist of two stories, accepted, but not paid for, and fifteen stories not accepted. In cash, he spread upon the table a meagre collection of soiled bills and coins. "We have twenty-seven dollars and fourteen cents. That is every penny we possess in the world."Dolly regarded him fixedly and shook her head.
"Is it wicked," she asked, "to love you so?""Haven't you been listening to me?" demanded Carter.
Again Dolly shook her head.
"I was watching the way you talk. When your lips move fast they do such charming things.""Do you know," roared Carter, "that we haven't a penny in the world, that we have nothing in this flat to eat?""I still have five hats," said Dolly.
"We can't eat hats," protested Champneys.
"We can sell hats!" returned Dolly. "They cost eighty dollars apiece!""When you need money," explained Carter, "I find it's just as hard to sell a hat as to eat it.""Twenty-seven dollars and fourteen cents," repeated Dolly. She exclaimed remorsefully: "And you started with three thousand! What did I do with it?""We both had the time of our lives with it!" said Carter stoutly.
"And that's all there is to that. Post-mortems," he pointed out, "are useful only as guides to the future, and as our future will never hold a second three thousand dollars, we needn't worry about how we spent the first one. No! What we must consider now is how we can grow rich quick, and the quicker and richer, the better.
Pawning our clothes, or what's left of them, is bad economics.
There's no use considering how to live from meal to meal. We must evolve something big, picturesque, that will bring a fortune. You have imagination; I'm supposed to have imagination, we must think of a plan to get money, much money. I do not insist on our plan being dignified, or even outwardly respectable; so long as it keeps you alive, it may be as desperate as--""I see!" cried Dolly; "like sending mother Black Hand letters!""Blackmail----" began that lady's son-in-law doubtfully.
"Or!" cried Dolly, "we might kidnap Mr. Carnegie when he's walking in the park alone, and hold him for ransom. Or"--she rushed on--"we might forge a codicil to father's will, and make it say if mother shouldn't like the man I want to marry, all of father's fortune must go to my husband!""Forgery," exclaimed Champneys, "is going further than I----""And another plan," interrupted Dolly," that I have always had in mind, is to issue a cheaper edition of your book, 'The Dead Heat.'
The reason the first edition of 'The Dead Heat' didn't sell----""Don't tell ME why it didn't sell," said Champneys. "I wrote it!""That book," declared Dolly loyally, "was never properly advertised. No one knew about it, so no one bought it!""Eleven people bought it!" corrected the author.
"We will put it in a paper cover and sell it for fifty cents,"cried Dolly. " It's the best detective story I ever read, and people have got to know it is the best. So we'll advertise it like a breakfast food.""The idea," interrupted Champneys, "is to make money, not throw it away. Besides, we haven't any to throw away. Dolly sighed bitterly.
"If only," she exclaimed, "we had that three thousand dollars back again! I'd save SO carefully. It was all my fault. The races took it, but it was I took you to the races.""No one ever had to drag ME to the races," said Carter. " It was the way we went that was extravagant. Automobiles by the hour standing idle, and a box each day, and----""And always backing Dromedary," suggested Dolly. Carter was touched on a sensitive spot. "That horse," he protested loudly, "is a mighty good horse. Some day----""That's what you always said," remarked Dolly, "but he never seems to have his day.""It's strange," said Champneys consciously. "I dreamed of Dromedary only last night. Same dream over and over again." Hastily he changed the subject.
"For some reason I don't sleep well. I don't know why."Dolly looked at him with all the love in her eyes of a mother over her ailing infant.
"It's worrying over me, and the heat,"' she said. "And the garage next door, and the skyscraper going up across the street, might have something to do with it. And YOU," she mocked tenderly, "wanted to send me to the sea-shore."Carter was frowning. As though about to speak, he opened his lips, and then laughed embarrassedly.
"Out with it," said Dolly, with an encouraging smile. "Did he win?"Seeing she had read what was in his mind, Carter leaned forward eagerly. The ruling passion and a touch of superstition held him in their grip.
