mazed, and went about
muttering, "What CAN be the matter with the Fosters?"

Three days. Then came events! Things had taken a happy turn, and
for forty-eight hours Aleck's imaginary corner had been booming.
Up--up--still up! Cost point was passed. Still up--and up--and up! Cost
point was passed. STill up--and up--and up! Five points above cost--then
ten--fifteen--twenty! Twenty points cold profit on the vast venture,
now, and Aleck's imaginary brokers were shouting frantically by
imaginary long-distance, "Sell! sell! for Heaven's sake SELL!"

She broke the splendid news to Sally, and he, too, said, "Sell!
sell--oh, don't make a blunder, now, you own the earth!--sell, sell!"
But she set her iron will and lashed it amidships, and said she would
hold on for five points more if she died for it.

It was a fatal resolve. The very next day came the historic crash, the
record crash, the devastating crash, when the bottom fell out of Wall
Street, and the whole body of gilt-edged stocks dropped ninety-five
points in five hours, and the multimillionaire was seen begging his
bread in the Bowery. Aleck sternly held her grip and "put up" as long
as she could, but at last there came a call which she was powerless to
meet, and her imaginary brokers sold her out. Then, and not till then,
the man in her was vanished, and the woman in her resumed sway. She put
her arms about her husband's neck and wept, saying:

"I am to blame, do not forgive me, I cannot bear it. We are paupers!
Paupers, and I am so miserable. The weddings will never come off; all
that is past; we could not even buy the dentist, now."

A bitter reproach was on Sally's tongue: "I BEGGED you to sell, but
you--" He did not say it; he had not the heart to add a hurt to that
broken and repentant spirit. A nobler thought came to him and he said:

"Bear up, my Aleck, all is not lost! You really never invested a penny
of my uncle's bequest, but only its unmaterialized future; what we
have lost was only the incremented harvest from that future by your
incomparable financial judgment and sagacity. Cheer up, banish these
griefs; we still have the thirty thousand untouched; and with the
experience which you have acquired, think what you will be able to do
with it in a couple years! The marriages are not off, they are only
postponed."

These are blessed words. Aleck saw how true they were, and their
influence was electric; her tears ceased to flow, and her great spirit
rose t