prospectuses. And I wish that I could have told you my own feeling about them before you bought any of the stock.''
''I do not think you can fully have taken it in, Ethel.''
''I trust that it may not have fully taken you in,' she replied. 'Have you noticed what those stocks are selling for at present?''
'Of course I had noticed this. I had paid 63 for Standard Egg, and it was now 48, while 11 was the price of Patent Pasteurized Feeder, for which I had paid 20. But this, Mr.
Beverly assured me, was a normal and even healthy course for a new stock. 'Had they gone up too soon and too high,' he explained, 'I should have suspected some crooked manipulation and advised selling at once. But this indicates a healthy absorption preliminary to a natural rise. I should not dream of letting mother part with hers.''
'The basis of Standard Egg was not only a monopoly of all the hens in the United States, but a machine called a Separator, for telling the age and state of an egg by means of immersion in water. Perfectly good eggs sank fast and passed out through one distributor; fairly nice eggs did not reach the bottom, and were drawn off through another sluice, and so on. This saved the wages of the egg twirlers, whose method of candling eggs, as it was called, was far less rapid than the Separator. And when I learned that one house in St.
Louis alone twirled 50,000 eggs in a day, the possible profits of the Egg Trust became clear to me. But they were not so clear to Ethel. She said that you could not monopolise hens. That they would always be laying eggs and putting it in the power of competitors to hatch them by incubators. Nor did she have confidence in the Pasteurised Feeder. 'Even if you get the parents to adopt it,' she said, 'you cannot get the children. If they do not like the taste of the milk as it comes out of the bottle through the Feeder, they will simply not take it.''
''Well,' I answered, 'old Mrs. Beverly is holding on to hers.''
'When I said this, Ethel sat with her mouth tight. Then she opened it and said: 'I hate that woman.''
''Hate her? Why, you have never so much as laid eyes on her.''
''That is not at all necessary. I consider it indecent for a grey haired woman with grandchildren to be speculating in the stock market every week like a regular bull or bear.''
'Every point in this outburst of Ethel's seemed to me so unwarrantable that I was quite dazed. I sat looking at her, and her eyes filled with tears. 'Oh Richard!' she exclaimed,
'she will ruin you, and I hate her!''
''My dear Ethel,' I replied, 'she will not. And only see how you are making it all up out of your head. You have never seen her, but you speak of her as a grey-haired grandmother.''
''She must be, Richard. You have told me that Mr. Beverly is a married man and about forty-five. No doubt he has older sisters and brothers. But if he has not, his mother can hardly be less than sixty-five, and he has probably been married for several years. He might easily have a daughter coming out, next winter, and a son at Harvard or Yale; and if their grandmother's hair is not grey, that is quite as unnatural as her speculating in monopolised eggs in this way at her age. She must be a very unladylike person.''
'Ethel, I saw, was excited. Therefore I made no more point of her theories concerning the appearance and family circle of old Mrs. Beverly. But in justice to myself I felt obliged to remind her, first, that I was investing, not speculating, and second, that it was Mr.
Beverly's advice I was following, and not that of his mother. 'Had he not spoken of her,' I said, 'I should have remained unaware of her existence.''
''She is at the bottom of it all the same,' said Ethel. 'Everything you have bought has been because she bought it.''
''That is not quite the right way to put it,' I replied. 'I was willing to buy these securities because Mr. Beverly thought so highly of them that he felt justified in--''
''There is no use,' interrupted Ethel, 'in our going round this circle as if we were a pair of squirrels. I do not ask you to hate that woman for my sake, but I cannot change my own feeling. Do you remember, Richard, about the City of Philippi Sewer Bonds? You did not want to buy them at first. You told me yourself that you thought new towns in Texas were apt to buzz suddenly and then die because all the people hurried away to some newer town and left the houses and stores standing empty. But Mr. Beverly's mother got some, and all your hesitation fled. And now I see that the Gulf, Galveston, and Little Rock is going to build a branch that may make Philippi a perfectly evaporated town. If you sold these bonds to-day, how much would you lose?''
'I did not enjoy telling Ethel how much, but I had to. 'Only fifteen thousand dollars,' I said.'
''Only!' said Ethel. 'Well, I hope his mother will lose a great deal more than that.''
'It is seldom that Ethel taps her foot, but she had begun to tap it now; and this inclined me to avoid any attempt at a soothing reply, in the hope that silence might prove still more soothing, and that thus we might get away from old Mrs. Beverly.'
''She cannot possibly be less than sixty-five,' Ethel presently announced. 'And she is far more likely to be seventy.''
'I thought it best to agree to any age that Ethel chose to give the old lady.'
''Do you suppose,' Ethel continued, 'that she does it by telephone?''
''My dearest,' I responded, 'he must do it all for her, of course, you know.''
''I doubt that very much, Richard. And she strikes me as being the sort of character for whom a mere telephone would not be enough excitement. The nerves of those people require more and more stimulants to give them any sensation at all. I believe that she sits in his private office and watches the ticker.''
''Why not give her a ticker in her bedroom while you are about it, Ethel?' I suggested.'
'But Ethel could not smile. 'I think that is perfectly probable,' she answered. And then,
'Oh, Richard, isn't it mean!' At this I took her hand, and she--but again I abstain from dwelling upon those circumstances of the engaged which are familiar to you all.'
'The change of May into June, and the change of June into July, did not mellow Ethel's bitter feelings. I
