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Updated: June 19, 2025
I used to send out fifty and a hundred men a year. Maybe only two or three'd turn up anything worth while. No, ma'am, I never got a dollar ahead on my digging. All the gold I ever dug went right off for grub or a good time." "Wonderful!" exclaimed Mrs. Presbury. "I never heard of such a thing." "But we're not here to talk about mines," said the general, his eyes upon Mildred.
Presbury noted uneasily how cold and straight, how obviously repelled and repelling the girl was as she yielded her fingers to Siddall at the leave-taking. He and her mother covered the silence and ice with hot and voluble sycophantry. They might have spared themselves the exertion. To Siddall Mildred was at her most fascinating when she was thus "the lady and the queen."
If you do it again, I'll give up and go on the streets before I'll marry him." Presbury shrugged his shoulders and went on to the other room. But he did not begin again the next day, and from that time forth avoided reference to the general. In fact, there was an astonishing change in his whole demeanor. He ceased to bait his wife, became polite, even affable.
A strange look came into the girl's face, and her mother could not withstand her eyes. "Don't, mother," she said quietly. "Either you take me for a fool or you are trying to show me that you have no self-respect. I am not deceiving myself about what I'm doing." Mrs. Presbury opened her lips to remonstrate, changed her mind, drew a deep sigh. "It's frightful to be a woman," she said.
She feared that Presbury had taken the wrong tone. She saw in the unpleasant eyes a glance of gratified vanity. Said he: "Not so bad, not so bad. I saw the house in Paris, when I was taking a walk one day. I went to the American ambassador and asked for the best architect in Paris. I went to him, told him about the house and here it is." "Decorations, furniture, and all!" exclaimed Presbury.
The fellows that make the money in mining countries ain't the prospectors and diggers, ma'am." "Really!" cried Mrs. Presbury breathlessly. "How interesting!" "They're fools, they are," proceeded the general. "No, the money's made by the fellows that grub-stake the fools give 'em supplies and send 'em out to nose around in the mountains.
If I take her and if she acts right, she'll have more of everything that women want than any woman in the world. I'd take a pride in my wife. There isn't anything I wouldn't spend in showing her off to advantage. And I'm willing to be liberal with her mother, too." Presbury had been hoping for this. His eyes sparkled. "You're a prince, General," he said. "A genuine prince.
Mildred was agreeably surprised she was looking with fierce determination for agreeable surprises when the costly little man spoke, in a quiet, pleasant voice with an elusive, attractive foreign accent. "My, but this is grand grand, General Siddall!" said Presbury in the voice of the noisy flatterer. "Princely! Royal!" Mildred glanced nervously at Siddall.
On the way to the hotel he girded at Mildred, reviewing all that the little general had said and done, and sneering, jeering at it. Mildred made not a single retort until they were upstairs in the hotel. At the door to her room she said to Presbury said it in a quiet, cold, terrible way: "If you really want me to go through with this thing, you will stop insulting him and me.
"Women are fools ALL women. But the principal trouble with the second Mrs. Siddall was that she wasn't a lady born." "That's why I say you'll have no trouble," said Presbury. "Well, I want her mother to talk to her plainer than a gentleman can talk to a young lady. I want her to understand that I am marrying so that I can have a WIFE cheerful, ready, and healthy.
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