"Papa, if you can see these things that are to be, so clearly, why can you not take the wise steps to plant your family on the safe side?"
"Ah! we Virginians were always the best statesmen, but we died poor. Having no manual craft, slight bookkeeping, and unlimited capacity for office, we foresaw everything but the humiliation of ourselves, and that we hardly admitted when it had come, so much were we flattered by our philosophic intellects. Our newest amusement is to expound the constitution to them who are doing too well under it, although our fathers, who made it, like Jefferson and Madison, died only yesterday, overwhelmed with debts, and poor Mr. Monroe is run away to New York, they say, to dodge the Virginia bailiffs."
"Well, papa, I have saved you from that fear. Here are your notes to Mr. Milburn and others. Sit down and look them over carefully and see if they are all here!"
He took them up, with volatile relief laughing on his yet tear-marked face, and said:
"Nay, sir, not till you have seen them all. A single note missing would give you the same perplexity, and there is no daughter left to settle it."
He looked at her with a smile, yet annoyance.
"You are not going to make a Meshach Milburn of me?"
"Stop, sir!" Vesta said. "You might do worse than learn from my husband."
Something strange in her expression baffled the Judge.
"Ha!" he interjected, "have I a rival already, daughter? Is his conquest as complete as that?"
"I promised to honor him a few moments ago, and I believe I can, papa. All that you tell me adds to my respect for a man who seems to be only what he is."
"Perhaps you can love him, too?" the Judge said, watching her with an apprehension a little like wonder, a little like jealousy.
"Oh, I wish I could, papa! That also I promised to do, and I will try. But my work will all be a failure if you do not become reconciled to Mr. Milburn. It was for you I married him, and to save your name, your peace, your independence, and the upbraiding we expected from mamma at the loss of her dower. He is now your son-in-law, still in the prime of life, with the business training you lament that you do not possess. Begin this moment, papa, and learn his habits. Count and identify those notes!"