I put the blotting-paper in the leaf deliberately, for I was wiser now
than when Aspen had excited me, and looked at my wife's cousin,
Jonathan Bud, inquiringly.

"Polly Bacon," whispered he, winking.

I continued the interrogative glance.

"She's going to marry me, and she'll show me the way to Spain," said
Jonathan Bud, hilariously.

"She'll make you walk Spanish, Jonathan Bud," said I.

And so she does. He makes no more hilarious remarks. He never bursts
into a room. He does not ask us to dinner. He says that Mrs. Bud does
not like smoking. Mrs. Bud has nerves and babies. She has a way of
saying, "Mr. Bud!" which destroys conversation, and casts a gloom upon
society.

It occurred to me that Bourne, the millionaire, must have ascertained
the safest and most expeditious route to Spain; so I stole a few
minutes one afternoon, and went into his office. He was sitting at his
desk, writing rapidly, and surrounded by files of papers and patterns,
specimens, boxes, everything that covers the tables of a great
merchant. In the outer rooms clerks were writing. Upon high shelves
over their heads, were huge chests, covered with dust, dingy with age,
many of them, and all marked with the name of the firm, in large black
letters--"Bourne & Dye." They were all numbered also with the proper
year; some of them with a single capital B, and dates extending back
into the last century, when old Bourne made the great fortune, before