The Lovely Lady | Page 6

a better start than I
had, but I'm my own boss here and one of the leading men. That's
always something."
Peter went and looked out of the smudged windows while he
considered this. The long scrapes of the wind in the loose snow were

like the scratches of great claws. It was now about mail time and a few
people began to stir in the street; the clear light and the cold gave them
a poverty-bitten look.
"Does anybody ever get rich in Bloombury?"
"Not that I know of. There's Mr. Dassonville in Harmony--Dave
Dassonville, the richest man in these parts."
"I suppose he could tell me how to go about it?"
"I suppose he would if he knows. Mostly these things just happen."
Peter did not say anything more just then; he was watching a man and a
girl of about his own age who had come out of a frame house farther
down the street. The young man was walking so as to shield her from
the wind, her rosy cheek was at his shoulder, and she smiled up at him
over her muff, from dark, bright eyes.
"What's set you on to talk about riches? Thinking of doing something
in that line yourself?"
"Yes," said Peter, kicking at the baseboard with his toes. "I don't know
how it is to be done, but I've got to be rich. I've just simply got to."

II
It was along in the beginning of spring on a day full of wet cloud and
clearing wind, that Peter walked over to Harmony to inquire of Mr.
David Dassonville the way to grow rich. It was Sunday afternoon and
the air sweet with the sap adrip from the orchards lately pruned and the
smell of the country road dried to elasticity by the winds of March.
Between timidity and the conviction that a week day would have been
better suited to his business, he drew on to the place of his errand very
slowly, for he was sore with the raking of the dragon's claws, and
unrested. It had been a terrible scrape to get together the last instalment

of interest, and since Ellen had shattered it with the gossip about Ada
Brown's engagement, there had been no House with Shining Walls for
Peter to withdraw into out of the dragon's breath of poverty; above all,
no Princess.
He did not know where the House had come from any more than he
knew now where it had gone. It was a gift out of his childhood to his
shy, unfriended youth, but he understood that if ever its walls should
waver and rise again to enclose his dreams, there would be no Princess.
Never any more. Princesses were for fairy tales; girls wanted Things.
There was his mother too--he had wished so to get her a new dress this
winter. It was an ache to him to cut off yards and yards of handsome
stuffs at Mr. Greenslet's, and all the longing in the world had not
availed to get one of them for his mother. Plainly the mastery of Things
was accomplished by being rich; he was on his way to Mr. Dassonville
to find out how it was done.
It was quite four of the clock when he paused at the bottom of the
Dassonville lawn to look up at the lace curtains at the tall French
windows. Nobody in Bloombury was rich enough to have lace curtains
at all the windows, and the boy's spirit rose at the substantial evidence
of being at last fairly in the track of his desire.
He found Mr. Dassonville willing to receive him in quite a friendly
way, sitting in his library, keeping the place with his finger in the book
he had been reading to his wife. Peter also found himself a little at a
loss to know how to begin in the presence of this lady, for he
considered it a matter quite between men, but suddenly she looked up
and smiled. It came out on her face fresh and delicately as an apple
orchard breaking to bloom, and besides making it quite spring in the
room, discovered in herself a new evidence of the competency of Mr.
David Dassonville to advise the way of riches. She looked fragile and
expensive as she sat in her silken shawl, her dark hair lifted up in a half
moon from her brow, her hands lying in her lap half-covered with the
lace of her sleeves, white and perfect like twin flowers. He saw rings
flashing on the one she lifted to motion to the maid to bring a chair.
"If you have walked over from Bloombury you must be tired," she said,

"and chilled, perhaps. Come nearer the fire."
"No, thank you," Peter had