“Awfully rich. Two thousand big, round, hard, beautiful dollars. Isn’t that grand!”
“I don’t know that it’s grand. But it’s good—with care.”
“It’s twice as much as I’ve ever made in a whole year of work on my silly little wall-paper designs.” Darcy directed a resentful look at the imitation-leather roll, lying in the corner where she had kicked it.
“My blessed old Aunt Sarah wrote it to me.”
“_Wrote_ it? Wrote you two thousand dollars?”
“Yes. Why not? She’d intended to leave it to me when she died. But she doesn’t feel like dying for a long time yet; so she wrote and said that she preferred giving it and getting thanked because it was so much, rather than willing it and getting roasted because it was so little.”
“Sensible auntie! Are you going to be sensible too?”
“Put the money in the bank. And forget this experiment.”
Darcy stretched out desperate hands toward the big, blessed mirror.
“Perhaps you never could be that. It’s only a chance at best.”
“But it _is_ a chance. You said it was a chance yourself.”
“And now are you going to take that away from me?”
Gloria’s eyes were doubtful. “Is it worth two thousand big, round, hard, beautiful dollars? Just the bare chance of it?”
“Two million,” declared Darcy with impassioned conviction.
“Then you’re determined to be a fool about this?”
Suddenly Gloria seized and hugged her. “If you weren’t, I’d disown you as a recreant to our sex,” she cried.
“To the bitter end! First let’s take an inventory. Be a lay figure again.”
The girl stiffened to attention. Gloria ticked off the points on her fingers as she talked.
“You’ve got several assets. First, you’re a lady. Nothing to teach there, and it’s the hardest of all lessons. Second, you’ve got a really charming voice if you didn’t whine with it. Third, your hair is nice. But it might as well be stuffing a pillow for all the good you get of it. Fourth, you’ve got eyes that’d be dangerous if the whites weren’t yellow. If you’d try wearing your heart in ’em instead of your liver, they’d do very well. Fifth, the lines of the face—see ‘Life.’ Sixth, you look as if you were built to be light and strong.”
“I rather like being a dummy,” purred Darcy.
“Wait. The other side of the ledger is coming. You’re going to have a bad five minutes. Stand up.”