Drawn up in front of the building was
a small delivery wagon, with a spindly horse and a boy. Freshly painted
on the dull black cover was the legend: "H. Ridge & Co. TEAS AND
COFFEES."
"City deliveries," Horatio explained. Snowden smiled wanly. Somehow the
spindly horse did not inspire Milly with confidence, nor the small boy.
But the outfit might answer very well for "city deliveries." Milly was
determined to see nothing but a rosy future for the venture. She
listened smilingly to Horatio, who bobbed along by her side, talking all
the time.
Evidently things had been moving with the Ridges since her departure.
Milly's insistent ambitions had borne fruit. She had roused the
quiescent Horatio. Hoppers' mail-order house offered a secure berth for
a middle-aged man, who had rattled half over the American continent in
search of stability. But, he told himself, the fire was not all out of
his veins yet, and Milly supplied the incentive this time "to better
himself." After some persuasion he had hired his friend Snowden, who had
not yet been invited to become a partner at Hoppers', and who agreed to
put ten thousand dollars into the new business, which Horatio was to
manage. And Grandma Ridge had been persuaded to invest five thousand
dollars, half of what the judge had left her, in her son's new venture.
Then a chance of buying out the China American Tea Company had come.
Pages:
49
50
51
52
53
54
55
56
57
58
59
60
61
62
63
64
65
66
67
68
69
70
71
72
73