Yet they had both grown
broader and richer in nature and experience, and there was something of
the subtile flavor of new acquaintanceship.

Yerbury cleaned house, even to the tidying-up of streets and
carting-away of rubbish. It was pitiful to see the attempts of some of
the poor women, who washed their worn white curtains, scrubbed the
shutters and hall-door, and set out a few ragged geraniums in the front
yard, or made a little bed of lettuce and onions.

Yerbury Savings Bank was in the hands of a receiver. Some sold out their
small accounts for a trifle: it was agreed there could not be much in
the way of dividends. Here was a great mortgage on the Downer farm,
that the Eastmans had partly cut into city lots. And, though Downer had
received a large price, he was a poor man to-day, with no business, and
several sons tramping the highways for work. Farms had not been
profitable, but had the wealth and extravagance produced any better
result? These places around would be sold presently for any sum they
would bring.

"Speculation did look so tempting, though," said Jack with a humorous
smile. "But for grandmother I might have been in the midst of it."

"There's just one thing that makes a man or a country rich," said Jane
Morgan incisively; "and that's industry, good, honest labor. Marking up
one's goods before breakfast, as the Frenchman did, realizes no absolute
money. The speculators jingle their dollars from hand to hand, until
some poor fool, attracted by the noise, gives them a hundred for their
twenty. When a man makes money simply by another person's loss, he has
not created any thing, or made any more of it; and the world's no
better, that I can see."

"Cousin Jane, you are dipping into political economy;" and Jack nodded
gayly. "I shall have to ask Maverick and some of the others up here; and
maybe you can put in a straw, or a head of wheat, toward the
regeneration of Yerbury."

"I dip into a little common sense now and then, and it seems to me
that's what the world needs. There is no lack of the uncommon kind, and
it's not to be altogether despised, since at times uncommon things are
given to people to do. But, if all the bees in the hive thought they had
a call to be queens, it runs in my mind there'd be a lack of honey
presently."

"You are on the right foundation, cousin Jane. We must not only make the
honey an honorable thing, but honor the bees, put labor on a better,
truer foundation."

"I s