“Splendid!  I can wait.  I can wait patiently—­ever so patiently.  Once I was near selling the land for twenty thousand dollars; once for thirty thousand dollars; once after that for seven thousand dollars; and once for forty thousand dollars—­but something always told me not to do it.  What a fool I would have been to sell it for such a beggarly trifle!  It is the land that’s to bring the money, isn’t it Laura?  You can tell me that much, can’t you?”

“Yes, I don’t mind saying that much.  It is the land.

“But mind—­don’t ever hint that you got it from me.  Don’t mention me in the matter at all, Washington.”

“All right—­I won’t.  Millions!  Isn’t it splendid!  I mean to look around for a building lot; a lot with fine ornamental shrubbery and all that sort of thing.  I will do it to-day.  And I might as well see an architect, too, and get him to go to work at a plan for a house.  I don’t intend to spare and expense; I mean to have the noblest house that money can build.”  Then after a pause—­he did not notice Laura’s smiles “Laura, would you lay the main hall in encaustic tiles, or just in fancy patterns of hard wood?”

Laura laughed a good old-fashioned laugh that had more of her former natural self about it than any sound that had issued from her mouth in many weeks.  She said: 

“You don’t change, Washington.  You still begin to squander a fortune right and left the instant you hear of it in the distance; you never wait till the foremost dollar of it arrives within a hundred miles of you,” —­and she kissed her brother good bye and left him weltering in his dreams, so to speak.

He got up and walked the floor feverishly during two hours; and when he sat down he had married Louise, built a house, reared a family, married them off, spent upwards of eight hundred thousand dollars on mere luxuries, and died worth twelve millions.

CHAPTER XXXV.

Laura went down stairs, knocked at/the study door, and entered, scarcely waiting for the response.  Senator Dilworthy was alone—­with an open Bible in his hand, upside down.  Laura smiled, and said, forgetting her acquired correctness of speech,

“It is only me.”

“Ah, come in, sit down,” and the Senator closed the book and laid it down.  “I wanted to see you.  Time to report progress from the committee of the whole,” and the Senator beamed with his own congressional wit.

“In the committee of the whole things are working very well.  We have made ever so much progress in a week.  I believe that you and I together could run this government beautifully, uncle.”

The Senator beamed again.  He liked to be called “uncle” by this beautiful woman.

“Did you see Hopperson last night after the congressional prayer meeting?”

“Yes.  He came.  He’s a kind of—­”

“Eh? he is one of my friends, Laura.  He’s a fine man, a very fine man.  I don’t know any man in congress I’d sooner go to for help in any Christian work.  What did he say?”