Bill's eyes suddenly twinkled. "What's the matter?" he chuckled. "John Marvin come back from the city to stay at his cabin?"
Millie blushed. "Daddy!" she pouted.
Mrs. Jones did not seem any too pleased at her husband's remark. "John Marvin 'ain't got nothin' to do with it!" she exclaimed. "I don't see what he comes foolin' around here for, anyway – Millie 'ain't got him on her mind!"
"I should say not!" Millie echoed, though it occurred to Bill that the softness of her brown eyes belied the petulant toss of her head. "Perhaps, after all, it would be best for me to go back to Mr. Thomas's office!"
Bill turned his half-shut eyes on her quickly, but Millie did not note the expression of genuine concern in them. He sat lost in thought. The last winter had been the most difficult of all for them. Millie, feeling that it was time for her being some help, had studied typewriting and stenography and had obtained a position in the office of Raymond Thomas, a San Francisco lawyer. Presumably on a vacation, Thomas had chanced to spend a week at the Jones place the previous summer. Millie had told him of her design to help the family, and Thomas had suggested that she take the position open in his office.
But that had been a dreary and lonely winter for Bill and his wife. Millie's pretty face and youthful ways had been missed sorely; the girl had come to be all in all to the old couple, and they could not bear to see her go away again for another long winter.
Then, too, Bill had his own reasons for feeling grave and down in the mouth when Millie suggested her returning to work in the office of Raymond Thomas. Bill Jones was not one to analyze, or to voice or explain his thoughts – even to himself – unless he took a notion to, or considered that the right moment had arrived; it was all too much trouble, anyway. Certain thoughts were running through his mind now, however; running a little at random, to be sure, but they were there. His young friend, John Marvin, had worked in Thomas's office for a time – was working there when Millie entered the office. Indeed, that was how Marvin had met Millie and found, to his delight, that they were neighbors up in Nevada – that she was the pretty daughter his friend Bill Jones was always mentioning.
But Bill was thinking now especially of the fact that Marvin had left Raymond Thomas's office suddenly, and had told Bill precisely why he had left.
"Don't you think it would be best for me to go back, daddy?" Millie questioned, interrupting his random musings. "Maybe mother could manage here, with one or two boarders and the money I shall send her. And there will be your army pension. Mr. Thomas is coming to pay us a visit to-morrow, you know, and I'll ask him at once for my old position. I know it will be all right, for he's always been perfectly splendid! He told me the position would always be open to me. You have no idea how kind and considerate he is, daddy! Then maybe next summer – "
"Next summer we're all goin' to be rich!" said her odd foster-father, unexpectedly. "Yes, sir, meanin' you an' mother, Millie girl, next summer we're goin' to be awful rich. Leastways, you an' mother is. Bein' rich wouldn't mean nothin' to me – I'm above it!"
"Why, daddy!" Millie exclaimed, staring at him. "How – What do you mean, daddy?"
Slumped away down in his chair, Bill's eyes were now all but closed tight and he was grinning.
"Nothin' particular," he answered, softly. "'Cept that maybe Bill Jones ain't called Lightnin' for nothin'."
"Bill," said his wife, "this ain't no time for to be smart! If you have anything to say, I wish to goodness you'd say it!"
Bill half opened his eyes and glanced at her. "Millie ain't goin' back to that tailor-made lawyer's office," he said.
"Daddy, please!" said Millie, flushing.
"You mustn't make fun of Mr. Thomas when – "
"All right, Millie," he stopped her, resting his thin hand on her brown hair for an instant. "I wouldn't say nothin' as would hurt you. But you won't have to go back, my dear – not unless you really want to leave us. I got an idea, mother – that's why I was late gettin' home. Ideas take time, 'specially when they're good ones! I got a good one what'll fix this whole business!"
Bill stuck his thumbs in his faded old shirt comically. Even slumped down in his chair as he was, the suggestion of a harmless swagger was in his manner – the easy swagger of one who, hitherto unconsidered, has astonished the skeptics by giving birth to an idea and solving a problem. There was something about Bill that suppressed the gentle but none the less amused smile that was dimpling Millie's cheeks.
"Out with it, daddy!" she demanded, restraining a desire to pull his ear.
"If Lem Townsend is so anxious to help us," he stated, "he can arrange all the details for you, mother. I 'ain't got time for details – that's what I told Grant once, when we was havin' supper before Petersburg. Got enough to do with the idea. Lem can put the ads. in them Reno papers, an' hire the maids for you, an' things like that." Then Bill suddenly stopped, hugely enjoying the mystification of his two listeners.
His wife sat up. "Bill Jones," she said, "you been drinking again down to town, that's what I think!"
"Go on, daddy!" Millie encouraged, putting her hand on his arm. "I feel that you've thought of something! Tell us!"
Ignoring his wife's accusation, Bill gave Millie a grateful glance and resumed, in his slow drawl:
"I got an idea – sure enough, mother an' Millie! It didn't hit me until I was half-way home to-day, but I got it lookin' at the mornin' train what goes on through to Reno. I've looked at a pile o' trains in my time, but I never got no idea from 'em before. Look here, don't the state line run plumb through the middle o' this house, so's half of it is in California an' the other half in Nevada? Well, what's the matter with makin' this house a hotel temporary for busted hearts what takes six months to cure? Lots o' them rich folks from the East who goes on down to Reno to git divorced would like to live on the lake, but they can't because they got to live in Nevada for six months. They can live on one side o' this house an' be in Nevada. An' at the same time they gits all the good o' livin' in California! They'd be tickled to death an' they'd be comin' in shoals all year, winter an' summer. An' what they pays ain't nothin' to them – the Reno hotels is so rich off them they don't want to take in no one what 'ain't a busted heart! You better start right away gettin' ready, mother!"
Mrs. Jones and Millie gasped. Bill, however, having spoken at considerable length for him, merely reached for his eternal bag of tobacco and paper and idly rolled himself a cigarette.
Millie clapped her hands. "Why, mother!" she cried, "daddy's right – it is an idea! And so simple!"
"All big things is simple," Bill remarked, with the air of one who ought to know.
Mrs. Jones stared from her husband to Millie. "Oh, Bill," she said, finally, "I really think we can do it! And now I'll tell you somethin'. I – I was goin' to suggest this very thing some time ago, but – but I thought you wouldn't approve of it on account o' Millie. Lem Townsend put the notion in my head when he was talkin' about our sellin' the timber."
Bill looked up. "Lem thought of it, eh? Didn't think Lem had that much sense. Anyways, I bet I thought of it first – I must 'a' been thinkin' of it for a long time without knowin' it. Why shouldn't I approve – on account o' Millie, mother?"
"I – I don't know," said his wife, uncertainly. "I hear some of them divorcers is – is – "
"Shucks, mother," Bill stopped her. "They're human beings, ain't they? An' them as ain't we needn't take. But they're all right. I seen a lot o' them on the trains. Right smart lookers, most o' them! They can't help it if their hearts gets busted, can they? Human beings is human beings. Besides, we gotter look at it from a business point o' view – as Lincoln said to me about the Civil War. I was a business man once an' – "
Millie laughed, and Bill, remembering that he was in the bosom of his family and that there were certain things he couldn't "get away with" there, subsided.
Evidently Mrs. Jones had been thinking hard during the past few minutes, and now she spoke. "We'll do it, Millie!"