IRON LOOKS STILL HIGHER.

“Well, my dear,” said Tramlay to his wife one evening in late winter, “the spell is broken. Three different people have bought building-sites of the Haynton Bay Company, and a number of others seem interested. There’s been a good deal of money made this winter, and now people seem anxious to spend it. It’s about time for us to be considering plans for our villa,—eh?”

“Not until we are sure we shall have more than three neighbors,” said Mrs. Tramlay. “Besides, I would first like to have some certainty as to how large our family will be this summer.”

“How large? Why, the same size as usual, I suppose. Why shouldn’t it be?”

“Edgar,” said Mrs. Tramlay, impatiently, “for a man who has a business reputation for quick wits, I think you’re in some things the stupidest person who ever drew breath.”

Tramlay seemed puzzled. His wife finally came to his aid, and continued:

“I should like to know if Lucia’s affair is to dawdle along as it has been doing. June is as late in the season as is fashionable for weddings, and an engagement—{213}—”

“Oh!” interrupted the merchant, with a gesture of annoyance, “I’ve heard the customary talk about mother-love, and believed it, up to date, but I can’t possibly bring myself to be as anxious as you to get rid of our blessed first-born.”

“It is because I love her that I am so desirous of seeing her happy and settled,—not to get rid of her.”

“Yes, I suppose so; and I’m a brute,” said the husband. “Well, if Phil has been waiting until he should be certain about his own condition financially, he will not need to wait much longer. I don’t know whether it’s through brains, or tact, or what’s called lover’s luck, but he’s been doing so well among railroad-people that in common decency I must either raise his salary largely or give him an interest in the business.”

“Well, really, you speak as if the business depended upon him.”

“For a month or two he’s been taking all the orders; I’ve been simply a sort of clerk, to distribute them among mills, or find out where iron could be had for those who wanted it in haste. He’s after an order now—from the Lake and Gulfside Road—that I let him attempt at first merely to keep him from growing conceited. It seemed too great and difficult a job to place any hope on; but I am beginning to half believe he’ll succeed. If he does, I’ll simply be compelled to give him an interest in the business: if I don’t, some of my competitors will coax him away from me.”

“What! after all you have done for him?”{214}

“Tut! tut! the favor is entirely on the other side. Had some outsider brought me the orders which that boy has taken, I would have had to pay twenty times as much in commissions as Phil’s salary has amounted to. What do you think of ‘Edgar Tramlay & Co.’ for a business sign, or even ‘Tramlay & Hayn’?”

“I suppose it will have to be,” said the lady, without any indication of gratification, “and, if it must be, the sooner the better, for it can’t help making Lucia’s position more certain. If it doesn’t do so at once, I shall believe it my duty to speak to the young man.”

“Don’t! don’t, I implore!” exclaimed the merchant. “He will think——”

“What he may think is of no consequence,” said Mrs. Tramlay. “It is time that he should know what city etiquette demands.”

“But it isn’t necessary, is it, that he should know how matter-of-fact and cold-hearted we city people can be about matters which country-people think should be approached with the utmost heart and delicacy? Don’t let him know what a mercenary, self-serving lot of wretches we are, until he is so fixed that he can’t run away.”

“Edgar, the subject is not one to be joked about, I assure you.”

“And I assure you, my dear, that I’m not more than half joking,—not a bit more.”

“I shall not say more than thousands of the most loving and discreet mothers have been obliged to say in similar circumstances,” said Mrs. Tramlay. “If{215} you cannot trust me to discharge this duty delicately, perhaps you will have the kindness to undertake it yourself.”

“The very thing!” said Tramlay. “If he must have unpleasant recollections of one of us, I would rather it wouldn’t be his mother-in-law. The weight of precedent is against you, don’t you know?—though not through any fault of yours.”

“Will you seriously promise to speak to him? At once?—this very week?”

“I promise,” said Tramlay, solemnly, at the same time wickedly making a number of mental reservations.

“Then if there should be any mistake it will not be too late to recall poor Mr. Marge,” said Mrs. Tramlay.

“My dear wife,” said Tramlay, tenderly, “I know Marge has some good qualities, but I beg you to remember that by the time our daughter ought to be in the very prime of her beauty and spirits, unless her health fails, Marge will be nearly seventy years old. I can’t bear the thought of our darling being doomed to be nurse to an old man just when she will be most fit for the companionship and sympathy of a husband. Suppose that ten years ago, when you boasted you didn’t feel a day older than when you were twenty, I had been twenty years older than I am now, and hanging like a dead weight about your neck? Between us we have had enough to do in bringing up our children properly: what would you have done had all the responsibility come upon you alone? And you certainly don’t care to think of the{216} probability of Lu being left a widow before she fairly reaches middle age?”

“Handsome widows frequently marry again, especially if their first husbands were well off.&rdquo............