National Avenue by Booth Tarkington (book recommendations website .txt) 📕

Please say goodbye for us to Mrs. Savage. Tell her when we get home we expect to find her downstairs again and enjoying the view from that big window of hers where she’s always loved to sit. Tell her papa wants to come with me to see her. He wants to talk with her about the old days when this was a little town. There aren’t so many left now he can do that with, though I know Mrs. Savage regards him as a mere youth, comparatively! He asks me to say goodbye to Mr. Oliphant and all of you for him⁠—and for myself I close with goodbye to you and send you my best love, always.

“Lordy!” Dan said, staring at this missive when he had finished reading it. “She is goin’ to be gone a long while! I don’t get to see her often, but it’s always mighty satisfactory to know she’s there⁠—just next door. That house’ll look pretty empty for a while, won’t it?” He sighed. “Well, I suppose I’d better go and let Lena know there’s nothin’ to disturb her now about the christening.”

Mrs. Oliphant told him lightly that she had already informed her daughter-in-law of Martha’s departure, and that it would be better for him not to mention the subject again;⁠—Lena had selected his aunt Olive as a proper godmother. Dan looked rueful, but muttered an unenthusiastic consent and went into the library to consult his father upon the best way to raise money in thirteen days.

Mr. Oliphant was unable to offer him either the money itself or practical advice how to get it. “I’m afraid it looks like pretty hard luck this time, Dan, old fellow,” he said. “It’s funny a man with as good a practice as mine can’t ever seem to be able to lay his hands on a little cash that doesn’t have to go right out on some old debt. If I just didn’t have to meet that confounded note I went on for poor old Tom Vertrees I⁠—”

“No, no,” his son protested;⁠—“I wouldn’t let you, if you could. My conscience’d trouble me about what I did let you do for me if I wasn’t so sure you’ll get paid back with seven percent interest as soon as I begin to get these lots to sellin’ off a little faster.”

“What about the three men your mother tells me have been out there looking at lots since you sold the first one? Couldn’t you offer them a reduction in the price for a little cash in hand?”

“I did,” Dan replied. “I did that the first thing with each of ’em. But one of ’em told a darkey I’ve got workin’ out there he thought he could get what he wanted still cheaper after the mortgage is foreclosed; and I guess maybe the other two thought the same way about it. I guess that’s the way those seven people felt that came when I tried to auction off some lots awhile back.”

“I’m afraid so. I hope you aren’t going to take it too hard, Dan.”

“Take what too hard, sir?”

“There are other things you can go into, my boy. You’ve shown you’ve got immense energy and perseverance. They may laugh at you, but you can be sure they like the grit you’ve shown, and if you do have to give up the idea⁠—”

“What idea, sir?”

“I mean the idea of this Addition,” his father explained. “If the time’s come when you have to let it go⁠—”

“Ornaby?” Dan interrupted with an incredulity wholly untouched by the facts confronting him. “Why, you just put any such notion out of your mind, sir.” And he repeated the extreme comparison he had made the night before. “Why, I’m not goin’ to let Ornaby go any more than I am our little namesake upstairs in his cradle! I’m goin’ to keep it this time and every time! I’ve got thirteen days left and I’ll find some way!”

He kept Ornaby “this time,” but in spite of his determined prophecy and all he did to fulfil it, six of his thirteen days passed and he had not found the way. Indeed, he did not find the way at all; for it was found through none of his seeking. On the seventh of the thirteen days his grandmother sent for him to come to talk to her in the evening; and when he sat down beside her and for a moment covered the ghostly hand on the coverlet with his own, he told her truthfully that she was looking better.

“Why, a great deal better!” he said. “I guess you’re goin’ to do what Martha said in her message, grandma, and get downstairs again before she comes home.”

“Do you think so?” she said in a voice a little stronger than it was when he had last talked with her. “You think I might fool that doctor after all?”

“But doesn’t he say you’re better, grandma?”

“Yes,” she said, and smiled faintly. “But he doesn’t think so. Told me this morning I was better and then came three times during the day! He doesn’t fool anybody.”

“But you’re goin’ to get well,” her grandson assured her. “What I want to know is: When are you goin’ to let me bring that baby to see you? Mother says you don’t⁠—”

“No, no,” she interrupted peevishly. “I don’t want to see any babies.”

“But, grandma, you’ve never seen any baby like⁠—”

“No, no!”

“But you don’t understand what a baby can be like,” he persisted. “I don’t know I ever thought much of babies generally, either; but I’ve found out there’s just as much difference between ’em as there is between people. Think of this, for instance: one day I was bendin’ down over him, just lookin’ at him⁠—and this was before he was even four weeks old, remember⁠—and all at once he took the notion I must be kind of funny. He broke right out in a laugh! He did! It was a real laugh, too, though a good many people might