“If you have got a streak of luck, there’s no need of your actin’ like a fool about it, Andrew Brewster,” said she.  “Go out and eat your supper, and behave yourself, and let it be a lesson to you.  There you had worked and saved that little money you had in the bank, and you bought an old mine with it, and it might have turned out there wasn’t a thing in it, no mine at all, and there was.  Just let it be a lesson to you, that’s all; and go out and eat your supper, and don’t be too set up over it.”

Andrew looked at his wife and mother and daughter, still with that expression of joy, so unreserved that it was almost idiotic.  They had all stood by him loyally; he had their fullest sympathy; but had one of them fully understood?  Not one of them could certainly understand what was then passing in his mind, which had been straitened by grief and self-reproach, and was now expanding to hold its full measure of joy.  That poor little sum in the bank, that accumulation of his hard earnings, which he had lost through his own bad judgment, had meant much more than itself to him, both in its loss and its recovery.  It was more than money; it was the value of money in the current coin of his own self-respect.

His mother shook him again, but rather gently.  “Get up this minute, and go out and eat your supper,” said she; “and then I don’t see why you can’t go with Fanny and me to the park opening.  They say lots of folks are goin’, and there’s goin’ to be fireworks.  It’ll distract your mind.  It ain’t safe for anybody to dwell too much on good luck any more than on misfortune.  Go right out and eat your supper; it’s most time for the car.”

Andrew obeyed.

Chapter LXI

The new park, which had been named, in honor of the president of the street railway company, Clemens Park, was composed of a light growth of oak and birch trees.  With the light of the full moon, like a broadside of silvery arrows, and the frequent electric-lights filtering through the young, delicate foliage, it was much more effective than a grove of pine or hemlock would have been.

When the people streamed into it from the crowded electric-cars, there were exclamations of rapture.  Women and girls fairly shrieked with delight.  The ground, which had been entirely cleared of undergrowth, was like an etching in clearest black and white, of the tender dancing foliage of the oaks and birches.  The birches stood together in leaning, white-limbed groups like maidens, and the rustling spread of the oaks shed broad flashes of silver from the moon.  In the midst of the grove the Hungarian orchestra played in a pavilion, and dancing was going on there.  Many of the people outside moved with dancing steps.  Children in swings flew through the airs with squeals of delight.  There was a stand for the sale of ice-cream and soda, and pretty girls blossomed like flowers behind the counters.  There were various