"
"If you'd let me have it an hour I would take it down to the
milk-house and empty and scrub it and then I could use it to pour
sweet cream into. Couldn't you--you leave it here--in Uncle Tucker's
care? I--I--really--I need it badly." The raillery in her voice was as
delicious and daring as that of any accomplished world woman out over
the Ridge. It fairly staggered Everett with its audacity.
"No," he answered, coolly disapproving, "no, I'll not leave it; you
might break it."
"I never break the crocks--I can't afford to. And women never break
men's hearts; they do it themselves by keeping a hand on the treasure
so as to take it back when they want it, and so between them both it
sometimes gets--shattered."
"Very well, then--the lid's off to you--and remember you asked
for--the rummage, Rose Mary," answered Everett in a tone as light as
hers. Then suddenly he rose and stood tall and straight in front of
her, looking down into her upraised eyes in the dusk. "You don't know,
do you, you rose woman you, what a man's life can hold--of
nothingness? Yes, I've worked hard at my profession and thrown away
the proceeds--in a kind of--riotous living. Other men's vast fortunes
have been built on my brains, and my next year I'm going to enter as a
penniless thirty-niner. When I came South three months ago I drew the
last thousand dollars I had in bank, I have a couple of hundreds left,
and that's all, out of over twenty thousand made in straight fees from
mineral tests in the last year.
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