Page:Hard-pan; a story of bonanza fortunes (IA hardpanbonanza00bonnrich).pdf/34

22 the Miss McCormicks at dinners, and suffered exceedingly in the effort known as "making conversation."

"I heard that they were fine, handsome girls, large, and with black hair like their mother. She was a beauty in her day—a hot-tempered Irish girl that Jerry married from the wash-tub. The youngest daughter is about Viola's age—twenty-three."

John Gault turned and looked at Viola with some surprise.

"You thought I was younger, did n't you?" she said, smiling. "Everybody does."

He was about to answer when the colonel once more took up the thread of his reminiscences.

"Maroney was down then—'way down; not even on the lowest rung of the ladder—he was n't on the ladder at all. I gave him the first lift he had. No one would look at Maroney in those days. He was a thin, consumptive-looking fellow, full of crazy schemes, forever coming to you and borrowing money for some wild-cat stock that was n't worth the paper it was printed on. I took a fancy to him, and every dollar he made was through my help and advice. It was when I had my offices on Montgomery Street, and he 'd have a way of dropping in about lunch-time and hanging round looking poor and sick. I used to take him