" There was a desperate sprite of banter in her eye
when she made this confession, a sprite that leaped forth to be gay when
I shrived her. But, though we sacredly observed all mirthful conventions
in our dallying, I knew that Miss Caroline had more than enough to
ponder of matters weighty. I knew that she was likely to have regretted
a too-ready sharing of Clem's easy enthusiasm over industrial conditions
in the North.
Clem believed by instinct not only that the evil thereof is sufficient
unto the day, but that the incidental good sufficeth also. His quality
of faith would have seemed a pointed rebuke to the common run of
believers in a Providence that watches and sends. Confronted by the
spectre of present want he could exorcise it neatly by the device of
beholding, in a contrary vision, future limitless pullets of a
marketable immaturity, or endless acres of garden produce ripe and ready
to sell. Moreover, his experience with "gold money" was as yet
insufficient to acquaint him with its truly volatile character. All sums
greater than a hundred dollars were blessedly alike to him--equally
prodigious. Two hundred, or thousands, or tens of thousands sent the
same rays of light through the spectrum of his poetic mind, and a bank
was an institution of such abiding grace that, having once established a
connection with it, one possessed forever a stout prop in time of need.
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