Page:Dorothy Canfield - Rough-hewn.djvu/391

 "A little business to attend to first. A small inheritance to cash in on."

"Inheritance!" cried Livingstone, sitting up straight. "The very word makes my mouth water. Why doesn't that ever happen to me?" The expression on his face was like that of the loungers in front of the Cathedral when they heard the coin drop.

Through the lather of soap-suds on his face, Neale laughed, "A very two-for-a-cent inheritance. An old great-uncle I hardly knew—never saw him but once or twice, years ago when I was a kid, left me his home and his little old-fashioned saw-mill and wood-working plant, back up at the end of nowhere in Vermont."

"No money!" sympathized Livingstone. "But then of course you can sell all that for something. But no real money at all?"

"There's what he had in the savings bank—about four thousand dollars, the executor writes. Just enough to do nothing at all with."

Livingstone made a mental calculation. "I wouldn't wonder if you might get fifty dollars a month out of the whole thing. And that's enough. Ma foi! That's enough if you cut corners a little. I only have eighty-five. And then you can always give an occasional English lesson to piece out. You won't need ever to do a lick of work or ever live in the States. Mes felicitations! That's the life! You'll be knowing Europe as well as I do, next. How soon will you be back?"

"I'm not coming back," said Neale, buttoning on a clean collar. "When I've cashed in and got what I can out of my uncle's business I'm going overland to San Francisco, and from there to the East."

Livingstone considered this, "Well, they do say that Chinese cooking is super-excellent once you get used to it."

"I'm not going for the cooking."

"No? What are you going for?"

"Oh, I don't know," said Neale rather sharply. "Because I feel like it. Why shouldn't I?"

Livingstone perceived that he had run on a hidden reef and