"Wonder if I'll get a glimpse of the so-called Mrs. Mazarine," he said
aloud. "Bad enough to marry a back-timer, but to marry Mazarine--they
don't say she's blind, either! Money--what won't we do for money, Mary?
But if she's as young as they say, she could have waited a bit for the
oof-bird to fly her way. Lots of men have money as well as looks. Anyhow,
I'm ready to take his cattle off his hands on a fair, square deal, and if
his girl-missis is what they say, I wouldn't mind--"
Having said this, he giggled and giggled again at his unspoken
impertinence. He knew he had almost said something fatuous, but the
suppressed idea appealed to him, nevertheless; for whatever he did, he
always had a vision of doing something else; and wherever he was, he was
always fancying himself to be somewhere else. That was the strain of
romance in him which came from his mixed ancestry. It was the froth and
bubble of a dreamer's legacy, which had made his mother, always
unconsciously theatrical, have a vision of a life on the prairies, with
the white mountains in the distance, where her beloved son would be
master of a vast domain, over which he should ride like one of Cortez'
conquistadores. Having "money to burn," she had, at a fortunate moment,
bought the ranch which, by accident, had done well from the start, and
bade fair, through the giggling astuteness of her spectacular son, to do
far better still by design.
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