Robert Barr

“ If he were a man moving in artistic circles he might perhaps remember that he had seen her face looking down at him from various canvases in picture exhibitions, and unless he were a stranger to the gossip of the country he could hardly help recollecting the dreadful fuss the papers made, as if it were any business of theirs, when young Ed. Druce married the artists' model, celebrated for her loveliness. ”

“ The old man became almost genial whenever he thought of his pretty daughter-in-law. "My little girl," he always called her. At first. Wall Street men said old Druce was getting into his dotage, but when a nip came in the market and they found that, as usual, the old man was on the right side of the fence, they were compelled reluctantly to admit, with emptier pockets, that the dotage had not yet interfered with the financial corner of old Druce's mind. ”

“ We are paupers, father; we haven't a cent left out of the wreck. That cheque business is so evidently a fraud that——but what's the use of talking. Old Druce has the money, and he can buy all the law he wants in New York. God! I'd like to have a seven seconds' interview with him with a loaded seven-shooter in my hand! We'd see how much the law would do for him then."
General Sneed despondently shook his head. ”

“ If, then, they should happen to call, she will hand it to them; if not, I shall use the contents to found a college for the purpose of teaching manners to young women whose grandfather used to feed pigs for a living, as indeed my own grandfather did. Should the ladies happen to like each other, I think I can put you on to a deal next week that will make up for Friday. I like you, Sneed, but you have no head for business. Seek my advice oftener.
Ever Yours, ⁠
Druce. ”

“ How foolish a thing is pride! And that reminds me that if your two daughters should happen to think as I do on the uncertainty of riches, I wish you would ask them to call. I have done up those securities in a sealed package and given the parcel to my daughter-in-law. ”

“ Surely a man married to please himself and not to make money. Ed. assured the old man that cases had been known where a suspicion of mercenary motives had hovered around a matrimonial alliance, but Druce expressed the utmost contempt for such a state of things. ”