Fisbee told Parker the story after his own queer fashion.
"You see, Mr. Parker," he said, as they sat together in the dust and
litter of the "Herald" office, on Sunday afternoon, "you see, I admit that
my sister-in-law has always withheld her approbation from me, and possibly
her disapproval is well founded--I shall say probably. My wife had also a
considerable sum, and this she turned over to me at the time of our
marriage, though I had no wish regarding it one way or the other. When I
gave my money to the university with which I had the honor to be
connected, I added to it the fund I had received from her, as I was the
recipient of a comfortable salary as a lecturer in the institution and had
no fear of not living well, and I was greatly interested in providing that
the expedition should be perfectly equipped. Expeditions of the magnitude
of that which I had planned are expensive, I should, perhaps, inform you,
and this one was to carry on investigations regarding several important
points, very elaborately; and I am still convinced it would have settled
conclusively many vital questions concerning the derivation of the
Babylonian column, as: whether the lotus column may be without prejudice
said to--but at the present moment I will not enter into that. 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. "She did not conceal from me that
she was surprised and that she could not look upon me as a practical man;
indeed, I may say, she appeared to regard me with marked antipathy. She
sent for her sister, and begged her to take our daughter and keep her from
me, as she did not consider me practical enough-I will substitute for her
more embittered expressions--to provide for a child and instruct it in the
world's ways. My sister-in-law, who was childless, consented to adopt the
little one, on the conditions that I renounced all claim, and that the
child legally assumed her name and should be in all respects as her own
daughter, and that I consented to see her but once a year, in Rouen, at my
brother-in-law's home.