Page:Traveler from Altruria, Howells, 1894.djvu/149

Rh so much, I did not feel bound to impart a fact that popped perversely into my mind. I was once talking with a western money-lender, a very good sort of fellow, frank and open as the day; I asked him whether the farmers generally paid off their mortages, and he answered me that if the mortgage was to the value of a fourth of the land, the farmer might pay it off, but if it were to a half or a third even, he never paid it, but slaved on and died in his debts. "You may be sure, however," I concluded, "that our young friend takes a jaundiced view of the situation."

"Now, really," said Mrs. Makely, "I must insist upon dropping this everlasting talk about money. I think it is perfectly disgusting, and I believe it was Mr. Makely's account of his speculations that kept me awake last night. My brain got running on figures till the dark seemed to be all sown with dollar marks, like the stars in the milky way. I—ugh! "What in the world is it? Oh, you dreadful little things!"

Mrs. Makely passed swiftly from terror to hysterical laughter as the driver pulled up short, and a group of bare-footed children broke in front of his horses, and scuttled out of the dust into the roadside bushes