She nodded. "They'll be thinking about that Mr. Herman--and kind of
talking about him and loving him.... I reckon it'll do him
good--whoever he is." She was looking at 'Mr. Herman' in space,
regarding him with kindly gaze.
Medfield smiled grimly. "I don't suppose you know what it is--not to
want any one to know who you are?"
She looked at him. "I should hate terribly not to have folks know I'm
Jane Holbrook!"
She was thoughtful a minute. "Seems as if it wouldn't be _me_--not more
than half me--if folks didn't know I was Aunt Jane!" She was looking at
him questioningly.
He shook his head.
"You've never been in my place." The words were dry.
"No.... I have a good many things to be thankful for," she added
impersonally.
His eyes were looking at something before him and there was a little
hard smile in their gaze. "Let some of them try it awhile," he said, as
if answering an accusation. "Let them try!" He turned to her.
"I can't go in a street-car or a restaurant or a store in town--I can't
walk along the street like other men--without being beset by people with
axes to grind." He looked at Aunt Jane as if he thought she might have
an axe concealed somewhere about her person. "They carry them around
with them in their pockets," he said savagely, "ready the minute they
see me coming down the street. They line up with them and wait for me to
appear. The minute a man hears my name, he doesn't think of _me_--he's
thinking what he can get out of me." His mouth set itself close. "I'm
not a _man_--I'm money!"
Aunt Jane's look was full of twinkling sympathy that went out to him.
"It's a pity you didn't think about that sooner, wasn't it?"
He stared.
"You might 'a' give away most of it--if you'd thought in time."
The stare broke. "You think it is easy, don't you?" he scoffed.
Her face grew sober. "No, I don't think it's easy.... Money seems to
stick to folks' fingers--kind o' glues 'em together, I guess."
He rubbed his thin fingers absently and looked down at them.
"It seems to me I could find a way, but I suppose I should be just like
the rest, if I had it--holding on to it for dear life!" She smiled at
him.
He was silent a minute, looking before him. "Sometimes I think I would
give every dollar I have in the world," he said slowly--"to have some
one think of me apart from my money!" He looked at the face in its
muslin cap. He knew he had never spoken to any one as he was speaking to
Aunt Jane. He had a sense of freeing himself from something.
He watched the face in its cap.... "I don't suppose any one can
understand--" He broke off with a sigh.
"Yes, I understand, I guess." She was looking down at the box of flowers
in her lap. "We all have our besetting sins. I have 'em! I guess money's
a kind of besetting sin!"