is meal I served up here t-night,
with all the high cost of living, didn't cost us two thirds what it
might if--if I didn't have it all figured up. Where do you think your
laundry-money that I've been saving goes, Harry? The marmalade-money I
made the last two Christmases? The velvet muff I made myself out of the
fur-money you give me? It's all in the Farmers' Trust, Harry. With the two
hundred and ten I had to start with five years ago, it's twenty-six hundred
and seventeen dollars and fifty cents now. I've been saving it for this
kind of a minute, Harry. When it got three thousand, I was going to tell
you, anyways. Is that enough, Harry, to do the Goldfinch-Goetz spectacle on
your own hook? Is it, Harry?"

He regarded her in a heavy-jawed kind of stupefaction.

"Woman alive!" he said. "Great Heavens, woman alive!"

"It's in the bank, waiting, Harry--all for you."

"Why, Millie, I--I don't know what to say."

"I want you to have it, Harry. It's yours. Out of your pocket, back into
it. You got capital to start with now."

"I--Why, I can't take that money, Millie, from you!"

"From your wife? When she stinted and scrimped and saved on shoe-leather
for the happiness of it?"

"Why, this is no sure thing I got on the brain."

"Nothing is."

"I got nothing but my own judgment to rely on."

"You been right three times, Harry."

"There's not as big a gamble in the world as the show business. I can't
take your savings, mother."

"Harry, if--if you don't, I'll tear it up. It's what I've worked for. I'm
too tired, Harry, to stand much. If you don't take it, I--I'm too tired,
Harry, to stand it."

"But, mother--"

"I couldn't stand it, I tell you," she said, the tears now bursting and
flowing down over her cheeks.

"Why, Millie, you mustn't cry! I 'ain't seen you cry in years. Millie! my
God! I can't get my thoughts together! Me to own a show after all these
years; me to--"

"Don't you think it means something to me, too, Harry?"

"I can't lose, Millie. Even if this country gets drawn into the war,
there's a mint of money in that show as I see it. It'll help the people.
The people of this country need to have their patriotism tickled."

"All my life, Harry, I've wanted a gold-mesh bag with a row of sapphires
and diamonds across the top--"

"I'm going to make it the kind of show that 'Dixie' was a song--"

"And a gold-colored bird-of-paradise for a black-velvet hat, all my life,
Harry--"

"With Alma Zit