It was even reported that fifteen hundred was fifteen thousand, but Andrew was proof against this brilliant loadstar of success, though many of his mates followed it afar, just before the shares dropped below par.

Jim Tenny went with the rest.  “Tell you what ’tis, Andrew, old man,” he said, clapping Andrew on the shoulder as they were going out of the shop one night, “you’d better go in too.”

“The savings-bank is good enough for me,” said Andrew, with his gentle doggedness.

“You can buy a trotter,” urged Jim.

“I never was much on trotters,” replied Andrew.

“I ain’t going to walk home many times more, you bet,” Jim said to Eva when he got home, and then he bent back her tensely set face and kissed it.  Eva was crocheting hoods for fifteen cents apiece for a neighboring woman who was a padrone on a small scale, having taken a large order from a dealer for which she realized twenty cents apiece, and employed all the women in the neighborhood to do the work.

“Why not?” said she.

“Oh,” said Jim, gayly, “I’ve bought some of that ‘Golden Hope’ mining stock.  Billy Monroe has just made fifteen thousand on it, and I’ll make as much in a week or two.”

“Oh, Jim, you ’ain’t taken all the money out of the bank?”

“Don’t you worry, old girl,” replied Jim.  “I guess you’ll find I can take care of you yet.”

But the stock went down, and Jim’s little venture with it.

“Guess you were about right, old man,” he said to Andrew.

Andrew was rather looked up to for his superior caution and sagacity.  He was continually congratulated upon it.  “Savings-banks are good enough for me,” he kept repeating.  But that was four years ago, and now his turn had come; the contagion of speculation had struck him at last.  That was the way with Lloyd’s failing employes.

Andrew kept his stock certificate in a little, tin, trunk-shaped box which had belonged to his father.  It had a key and a tiny padlock, and he had always stored in it the deed of his house, his savings-bank book, and his insurance policy.  He carried the key in his pocket.  Fanny never opened the box, or had any curiosity about it, believing that she was acquainted with its contents; but now when, on coming unexpectedly into the bedroom—­the box was always kept at the head of the bed—­she heard a rattle of papers, and caught Andrew locking the box with a confused air, she began to suspect something.  She began to look hard at the box, to take it up and shake it when her husband was away.  Fanny was crocheting hoods as well as Eva.  Ellen wished to learn, but her mother would not allow that.  “You’ve got enough to do to study your lessons,” she said.  Andrew watched his wife crochet with ill-concealed impatience.

“I ain’t goin’ to have you do that long,” he said—­“workin’ at that rate for no more money.  That Mrs. William Pendergrass that lets out these hoods is as bad as any factory boss in the country.”