"Aren't they homey looking, father? And just right for us.... Now that one at the end of the block--it's empty.... You can see the lake from the front windows. Just think, to be able to _see_ something!"
They went up the steps of the vacant house, and to be sure a little slice of blue water closed the vista at the end of the street. Horatio swung his cane hopefully. The pleasant day, the sense of "being his own man" exhilarated him: he dealt lightly with the "future."
"It's a tony neighborhood, all right," he agreed. "What did you say these houses rent for?"
"Eighty dollars a month--that's what the Nortons pay."
"Eighty a month--that's not bad, considering what you get!" Horatio observed largely.
It was a bargain, of course, as father and daughter tried to convince Mrs. Ridge. But the old lady, accustomed to Euston, Pa., rents, thought that the forty dollars a month they had to pay for the West Laurence box was regal, and when it was a question of subletting it at a sacrifice and taking another for twice the sum she quaked--visibly.
"Don't you think, Horatio, you'd better wait and see how the new business goes?"
But the voice of prudence was not to the taste of the younger generations.
"It'll be so near the store," Milly suggested. "Papa can come home for his lunch."
"You've got to live up to your prospects, mother," Horatio pronounced robustly.
The old lady saw that she was beaten and said no more. With compressed lips she contemplated the future. Father and daughter had no doubts: they both possessed the gambling American spirit that reckons the harvest ere the seed is put in the ground.
That evening after Milly had departed Horatio explained himself further,--
"You see, mother, we must start Milly the best we can. She's made a lot of real good friends for herself, and she'll marry one of these days. It's our duty to give her every chance."
It never occurred to Horatio that a healthy young woman of twenty with no prospect of inheritance might find something better worth doing in life than amusing herself while waiting for a husband. Such strenuous ideas were not in the air then.
"She'll always have a home so long as I'm alive and can make one for her," he said sentimentally. "But she'll get one for herself, you see!"