John van Alstyne's Factory, Part VII-IX [pp. 334-353]

JOHN V4ANv ALSTYNE'S FACTORY.
body knows, in the way he is managing that mill. And I might
as well talk to the wind as to him; besides, if I should try to
interfere, it might look as if I were only considering myself."
"What I say couldn't be of any importance one way or the
other," said Zip.
"Oh! yes, it could; it's as plain as can be that you are going
to be another of his pets. Really, when a man gets to be as old
as he, and is so very peciiar about money, it seems to me the
law ought to look after him. His father was queer in his head,
and if my poor William had only been guided by me he would
have held on to his stocks instead of selling out to the old man
just when they fell so low. They would have been mine then;
and now I have hardly anything worth mentioning at least,
not in comparison to what it ought to have been. People should
be just to their own before they are generous to strangers, don't
you think?"
"I thought Mr. Van Alstyne was very just. All I have
heard about him and his ways of dealing with people has made
me think so."
"Yes; I know some folks look at it in that way, but I can
never help feeling that nearly all his money ought by good
rights to be mine. He never speculated, and he would have
trudged along in the same old rut for ever if William hadn't had
some enterprise."
"Perhaps Mr. Van Alstyne feels that he owes a great deal to
Mr. Murray. That is only natural when one's life has been
saved by another-under such circumstances, too. He told me
all about it this afternoon; it must have been awful."
"Oh! I wasn't thinking about the Murrays so much. That
is all well enough, I suppose-if it stopped there. But it doesn't.
I was only considering the matter by and large."
Unseen in the firelight Zip blushed. She was perfectly
aware that she had tried to give the talk an adroit bend in the
direction of the tall, fair young fellow who had caused her first
shyness, and that she had been baffled by what struck her at
that moment as even greater selfishness than she had previously
been inclined to think it. She said good-night directly afterward and went away to her own room, very much disgusted
with her hostess, and not a little with herself. One thing stood
out distinctly from all the rest as her thoughts persisted in retracing every incident of the evening, from the moment when,
still excited by the story of Paul Murray's heroism to which she
had been listening, she had heard the gate click on his entrance,
[Dec.,
352