"Did he give his consent?"
"Why--hang it--I--we got to talking business and I forgot to----"
"So like you, dear. However, it must be all right, for he said he
should need your help in buying the coast branches and The Short Line."
"The Short Line," gasped Glover. "Well, I haven't inventoried lately.
If we marry in June----"
"Don't worry about that, for we sha'n't marry in June, my love."
"But when we do, we shall need some money for a wedding-trip----"
"We certainly shall; a lot of it, dearie."
"I may have ten or twelve hundred left after that is provided for. But
my confidence in your father's judgment is very great, and if he's
going to make up a pool, my money is at his service, as far as it will
go, to buy The Short Line--or any other line he may take a fancy to."
"Why, he's just telling Marie about your making a hundred thousand
dollars in four years by being wonderfully shrewd----"
"But that confounded mine that I told you about----"
"You dear old stupid. Never mind, you have made a real strike to-day.
But if you ever again delude papa into thinking you know more than I
do, I shall expose you without mercy."
The train, a private car special, carrying Mr. Brock, chairman of the
board, and his family, the new president and the second vice-president
elect, was pulling slowly across the long, high spans of the Spider
bridge. Glover and Gertrude had gone back to the observation platform.
Leaning on his arm, she was looking across the big valley and into the
west. The sun, setting clear, tinged with gold the far snows of the
mountains.
"It is less than a year," she was murmuring, "since I crossed this
bridge; think of it. And what bridges have I not crossed since! See.
Your mountains are fading away----"
"My mountains faded away, dear heart, don't you know, when you told me
I might love you. As for those"--his eyes turned from the distant
ranges back to her eyes--"after all, they brought me you."