Page:Stewart Edward White--The Rose Dawn.djvu/290

278 Mrs. Stanley, like everyone else, was a millionaire while the boom lasted; but she was a lady of robust common sense. One morning Patrick Boyd found her gardening near the dividing fence when he came out of his house for his after-breakfast cigar. The sunbonneted, heavy-booted figure waved him imperiously. "I want you to tell me what's going to happen in this market," she boomed at him.

He looked at her speculatively. They had enjoyed many pitched battles as antagonists; and he liked her.

"I will tell you my opinion, if you will tell me exactly where you stand in it."

"Come into the house," she invited him with instant decision.

They sat for some time in the stiff old-fashioned library examining a land book with alluring figures; a bank book; and an old probate list of securities.

"I see," observed Boyd at last. "If you were to pay up what you owe in contracts, without selling any of the land, it would just about clean out your ready assets, wouldn't it?"

"But of course I don't expect to do that. I expect to sell some land," boomed Mrs. Stanley.

"Then you'd better do so very promptly if you can," advised Boyd.

Mrs. Stanley looked anxious.

"If I can?" she repeated. "Then you thinkOh, you must tell me all the truth without equivocation, Mr. Boyd. If I lose my income what is to become of me—of my children?" She was genuinely alarmed and distressed. For the first time this grenadier of a woman had lost her complete independence of bearing.

Boyd explained to her the situation as he saw it: and added this:

"I'll do for you what I would do for no other person I know. If you will give me power of attorney, I will see what I can do. But you must understand that all you can expect is to be relieved of the weight of your debts. The only hope of selling at all is at a price to appeal to those who believe another boom will follow this depression."

He got the power of attorney, and a week later made his re-