I fear I
had no great experience in money matters, for the transaction had been
almost entirely verbal, and there was nothing to bind the trustees to
carry out my plans for the expedition. They were very sympathetic, but
what could they do? they begged leave to inquire. Such an institution
cannot give back money once donated, and it was clearly out of character
for a school of technology and engineering to send savants to investigate
the lotus column."
"I see," Mr. Parker observed, genially. He listened with the most
ingratiating attention, knowing that he had a rich sensation to set before
Plattville as a dish before a king, for Fisbee's was no confidential
communication. The old man might have told a part of his history long ago,
but it had never occurred to him to talk about his affairs--things had a
habit of not occurring to Fisbee--and the efforts of the gossips to draw
him out always passed over his serene and absent head.
"It was a blow to my wife," the old man continued, sadly, "and I cannot
deny that her reproaches were as vehement as her disappointment was
sincere." He hurried over this portion of his narrative with a vaguely
troubled look, but the intelligent Parker read poor Mrs. Fisbee's state of
mind between the sentences. "She never seemed to regard me in the same
light again," the archaeologist went on.
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