Volume IX Part 7 (1/2)
”Everything depends upon how you look at it. In one way the sum is large. In another way it isn't. General Jenkins had just twenty times sixty thousand. Tremendous, isn't it? He might just as well have left us another million. He is in Heaven and wouldn't miss it. Then we could have some of our plans more fully carried out.”
”I hate to be thought covetous,” answered Mrs. Grimes, ”but I do wish he had put on that other million.”
The next day Mr. Grimes, while sitting with his wife after supper, took a memorandum from his pocket and said:
”I've been jotting down some figures, Mary Jane, just to see how we will come out with our income of sixty thousand dollars.”
”Well?”
”If we give the place across the street for a park and a library and a hundred thousand dollars with which to run it, we shall have just nine hundred thousand left.”
”Yes.”
”We shall want horses, say a carriage pair, and a horse for the station wagon. Then I must have a saddle horse and there must be a pony for the children. I thought also you might as well have a gentle pair for your own driving. That makes six. Then there will have to be, say, three stable men. Now, my notion is that we shall put up a larger house farther up town with all the necessary stabling. Count the cost of the house and suitable appointments, and add in the four months' trip to Europe which we decided yesterday to take next summer, and how much of that fifty-four thousand do you think we shall have left at the end of the year?”
”But why build the house from our income?”
”Mary Jane, I want to start out with the fixed idea that we will not cut into our princ.i.p.al.”
”Well, how much will we have over?”
”Not a dollar! The outlay for the year will approximate fifty-six thousand dollars.”
”Large, isn't it?”
”And yet I don't see how we can reduce it if we are to live as people in our circ.u.mstances might reasonably be expected to live.”
”We must cut off something.”
”That is what I think. If we give the park and the library building to the town why not let the town pay the cost of caring for them?”
”Then we could save the interest on that other hundred thousand.”
”Exactly, and n.o.body will suffer. The gift of the property alone is magnificent. Who is going to complain of us? We will decide now to give the real estate and then stop.”
Two days later Mr. Grimes came home early from the bank with a letter in his hand. He looked white and for a moment after entering his wife's room he could hardly command utterance.
”I have some bad news for you, dear--terrible news,” he said, almost falling into a chair.
The thought flashed through Mrs. Grimes' mind that the General had made a later will which had been found and which revoked the bequest to George. She could hardly whisper:
”What is it?”
”The executors write to me that the million dollars left to me by the General draws only about four per cent. interest.”
”George!”
”Four per cent! Forty thousand dollars instead of sixty thousand! What a frightful loss! Twenty thousand dollars a year gone at one breath!”
”Are you sure, George?”
”Sure? Here is the letter. Read it yourself. One-third of our fortune swept away before we have a chance to touch it!”