CHAPTER XXV
WE FACE THE FACTS AND EACH OTHER
The panic which had begun with the depositors of small accounts, spread next day to the holders of larger ones, and even while I stood at my window and watched the cash brought in in bags through the cheering crowd on the sidewalk, I knew that the quarter of a million dollars would go down with the rest. My financial insight had misled me, and the bank funds, which I had believed so carefully guarded, had suffered the same fate as my private fortune. There were more serious questions behind the immediate need of currency, and these questions drummed in my mind now, dull and regular as the beat of a hammer.
For three days we paid off our accounts, and at the end of that time, when I left the building, after the run had stopped, it seemed to me that the city had a deserted and trampled look, as if some enormous picnic had been held in the streets. A few loose shreds of paper, a banana peel here and there, the ends of numerous cigars, and the white patch torn from a woman's petticoat littered the pavement. Over all there was a thick coating of dust, and the wind, blowing straight from the east, whipped swirls of it into our faces, as the General and I drove slowly up-town in his buggy.
"You look down in the mouth, Ben," he remarked, as I took the reins.
"I've got an infernal toothache, General; it kept me awake all night."
"Well, bless my soul, you ought to be thankful if it takes your mind off the country. I haven't seen such a state of affairs since the days of reconstruction. I tell you, my boy, the only thing on earth to do is to take a julep. Lithia water is well enough in times of prosperity, but you can't support a panic on it. I've gone back to my julep, and if I die of it, I'll die with a little spirit in me."
"There're worse things than death ahead of me, General, there's ruin."
"It's the toothache, Ben. Don't let it take all the spirit out of you."
"No, it's more than the toothache, confound it! – it never leaves off. The truth is, I'm in the tightest place of my life, and to keep what I own would cost me more than I've got. I haven't the money to pay up – and if I can't buy outright, you see that I must let go."
"I've done what I could for you, Ben, and if there is more I can do, heaven knows I'll be thankful enough."
"You've already done too much, General, but I've made sure that you shan't suffer by it. I've simply gone down, that's all, and I've got to stay there till I can get on my feet. The bank will close temporarily, I suppose, but when it starts again, it will have to start with another man. I shall look out for a smaller job."
"If you come back to the road, I'll find a place for you – but it won't be like being a bank president, you know."
"Well, when the time comes, I'll let you know," I added, when the buggy stopped before my door, and I handed him the reins.
"Listen to me, my boy," he called back, as he drove off and I went up the brown stone steps, "and take a julep."
But the support I needed was not that of whiskey, and though I swallowed a dozen juleps, the thought of Sally's face when I broke the news would suffer no blessed obscurity.
"Shall I tell her now, or after dinner?" I asked, while I drew out my latch-key; and then when she met me at the head of the staircase, with her shining eyes, I grew cowardly again, and said, "Not now – not now. To-night I will tell her."
At night, when we sat opposite to each other, with a silver bowl of jonquils between us, she began talking idly about the marriage of Bonny Page, inspired, I felt, by a valiant determination to save the situation in the eyes of the servants at least. The small yellow candle shades, made to resemble flowers, shone like suns in a mist before my eyes; and all the time that my thoughts worked over the approaching hour, I heard, like a muffled undertone, the soft, regular footfalls of old Esdras, the butler, on the velvet carpet.
"I'll tell her after the servants have gone, and the house is quiet – when she has taken off her dinner gown – when she may turn on her pillow and cry it out. I'll say simply, 'Sally, I am ruined. I haven't a penny left of my own. Even the horses and the carriages and the furniture are not mine!' No, that is a brutal way. It will be better to put it like this" – "What did you say, dear?" I asked, speaking aloud.
"Only that Bonny Page is to have six bridesmaids, but the wedding will be quiet, because they have lost money."
"They've lost money?"
"Everybody has lost money – everybody, the General says. Ben, do you know," she added, "I've never cared truly about money in my heart."
In some vague woman's way she meant it, I suppose, yet as I looked at her, where she sat beyond the bowl of jonquils, in one of her old Paris gowns, which she had told me she was wearing out, I broke into a short, mirthless laugh. She held her head high, with its wreath of plaits that made a charming frame for her arched black eyebrows and her full red mouth. On her bare throat, round and white as a marble column, there was an old-fashioned necklace of wrought gold, which had belonged to some ancestress, who was doubtless the belle and beauty of her generation. Was it possible to picture her in a common gown, with her sleeves rolled up and the perplexed and anxious look that poverty brings in her eyes? For the first time in my life I was afraid to face the moment before me.
The roast was removed, the dessert served, and played with in silence. The footfalls of old Esdras, the butler, sounded softer on the carpet, as he carried away the untasted pudding and brought coffee and an apricot brandy, which he placed before me with a persuasive air. I lit a cigar at the flame of the little silver lamp he offered me, drank my coffee hurriedly, and rose from the table.
"Are you going to work, Ben?" asked Sally, following me to the door of the library.
"Yes, I am going to work."
Without a word she raised her lips to mine, and when I had kissed her, she turned slowly away, and went up the staircase, with the branching lights in the hall shining upon her head.
I closed the door, lowered the wick of the oil lamp on my desk, and began walking up and down the length of the room, between the black oak bookcases filled with rows of calf-bound volumes. I tried to think, but between my thoughts and myself there obtruded always, like some small, malignant devil, the face of the old woman on the pavement before the bank, with her distorted and twisted mouth. "This will have to go – everything will have to go – when I've sold every last stick I have in the world, I shall still owe a debt of some cool hundreds of thousands. I'll pay that, too, some day. Of course, of course, but when? Meanwhile, we've got to live somewhere, somehow. There's the child, too – and there's Sally. I always said I'd only money to give her, and now I haven't that. We'll have to go into some cheap place, and I'll begin over again, with the disadvantages of a failure behind me, and a burden of debt on my shoulders. She's got to know – I've got to tell her. Confound that old woman! Why can't I keep her out of my thoughts?"
The hours went by, and still I walked up and down between the black oak bookcases, driven by some demon of torture to follow the same line in the Turkish rug, to turn always at the same point, to measure always the same number of steps.
"Well, she got her money – they all got their money," I said at last. "I am the only one who is ruined – no, not the only one – there is Sally and there is the child. I'd feel easier," I added, echoing the words of the old woman aloud, "I'd feel easier if I were the only one."
A clock somewhere in the city struck the hour of midnight, and while the sound was still in the air, the door opened softly and Sally came into the room. She had slipped on a wrapper over her nightdress, and her hair, flattened and warmed by the pillow, hung in a single braid over her bosom. There were deep circles under her eyes, which shone the more brilliantly because of the heavy shadows.
"What is the matter, Ben? Why don't you come upstairs?"
"I couldn't sleep – I am thinking," I answered, almost roughly, oppressed by my weight of misery.
"Would you rather be alone? Shall I go away again?"
"Yes, I'd rather be alone."
She went silently to the door, stood there a minute, and then ran back with her arms outstretched.
"Oh, Ben, Ben, why are you so hard? Why are you so cruel?"
"Cruel? Hard? To you, Sally?"
"You treat me as if – as if I'd married you for your money and you've made me hate and despise it. I wish – I almost wish we hadn't a penny."
I laughed the bitter, mirthless laugh that had broken from me at dinner.
"As a matter of fact we haven't – not a single penny that we can honestly call our own."
She drew back instantly, her head held high under the branching electric jet in the ceiling.
"Well, I'm glad of it," she responded defiantly.
"You don't in the least understand what it means, Sally. It isn't merely giving up a few luxuries, it is actually going without the necessities. It is practically beginning again."
"I am glad of it," she repeated, and there was no regret in her voice.
"Oh, can't you understand?"
"Tell me and I will try."
"I've lost everything. I'm ruined."
"There is nothing left?"
"There is honour," I said bitterly, "a couple of hundred thousand dollars of debt, and a little West Virginia railroad too poor to go bankrupt."
"Then we must start from the very bottom?"
"From the very bottom. Nothing that you are likely to imagine can be worse than the facts – and I've brought you to it."
Something that was like a sob burst from me, and turning away, I flung myself into the chair on the hearth-rug.
"Can't you think of anything that would be worse?" she asked quietly.
I shook my head, "The worst thing about it is that I've brought you to it."
"Wouldn't it be worse," she went on in the same level voice, "if you had lost me?"
"Lost you!" I cried, and my arms were open at the thought.
"I'm glad, I'm glad." With the words she was on her knees at my side, and her mouth touched my cheek. "I knew it wasn't the worst, Ben, – I knew you'd rather give up the money than give up me. Ah, can't you see – can't you see, that the worst can't come to us while we are still together?"
Leaning over her, I gathered her to me with a hunger for comfort, kissing her eyes, her mouth, her throat, and the loosened braid on her bosom.
"Oh, you witch, you've almost made me happy!" I said.
"I am happy, Ben."
"Happy? The horses must go, and the carriage and the furniture even. We'll have to move into some cheap place. I'll get a position of some kind with the railroad, and then we'll have to scrimp and save for an eternity, until we pay off this damned burden of debt."
She laughed softly, her mouth at my ear. "I'm happy, Ben."
"We shan't be able to keep servants. You'll have to wear old clothes, and I'll go so shabby that you'll be ashamed of me. We'll forget what a bottle of wine looks like, and if we were ever to see a decent dinner, we shouldn't recognise it."
Again she laughed, "I'm still happy, Ben."
"We'll live in some God-forsaken, out-of-the-way little hole, and never even dare ask a person in to a meal for fear there wouldn't be enough potatoes to go around. It will be a daily uphill grind until I've managed to pay off honestly every cent I owe."
Her arms tightened about my neck, "Oh, Ben, I'm so happy."
"Then you are a perfectly abandoned creature," I returned, lifting her from the rug until she nestled against my heart. "I've given up trying to make you as miserable as a self-respecting female ought to be. If you won't be proper and wretched, I can't help it, for I've done my best. And the most ridiculous part of it is, darling, that I actually believe I'm happy, too!"
She laughed like a child between her kisses. "Then, you see, it isn't really the thing, but the way you take it that matters."
"I'm not sure about the logic of that – but I'm inclined to think just now that the only thing I've ever taken is you."
"If you'll try to remember that, you'll be always happy."
"But I must remember also that I've brought you to poverty – I, who had only money to give you."
"Do you dare to tell me to my face that I married you for money?"
"You couldn't very well have married me without it."
"I don't know about the 'very well,' but I know that I'd have done it."
"Do you think that, Sally?"
Turning in my arms, she lifted her head, and looked steadily into my face.
"Have I ever lied to you since we were married, Ben?"
"No, darling."
"Have I ever deceived you?"
"Never, I am sure," I responded with a desperate levity, "except for my good."
"Have I ever deceived you," she demanded sternly, "even for your good?"
"To tell the truth, I don't believe you ever have."
The warm pressure of her body was withdrawn, and rising to her feet, she stood before me under the blazing light.
"Then I'm not lying to you when I say that I'd have married you if you hadn't possessed a penny to your name – I'd have married you if – if I'd had to take in washing."
"Sally!" I cried, and made a movement to recapture her; but pushing me back, she stood straight and tall, with the fingers of her outstretched hand touching my breast.
"No, listen to me, listen to me," she said gravely. "As long as I have you and you love me, Ben, nothing can break my spirit, because the thing that makes life of value to me will still be mine. If you ever ceased to love me, I might get desperate, and do something wild and foolish – even run off with another man, I believe – I don't know, but I am my father's daughter, as well as my mother's. Until that time comes, I can bear anything, and bear it with courage – with gaiety even. I can imagine myself without everything else, but not without you. I love my child – you know I love my child – but even my child isn't you. If I had to choose to-night between my baby and you, I'd give him up, – and cling the closer to you. You are myself, and if I had to choose between everything else I've ever known in my life and you, I'd let everything else go and follow you anywhere – anywhere. There is nothing that you can endure that I cannot share with you. I can bear poverty, I could even have borne shame. If we had to go to some strange country far away from all I have ever known, I could go and go cheerfully. I can work beside you, I can work for you – oh, my dear, my dearest, I am your wife, do you still doubt me?"
I had fallen on my knees before her, with her open palms pressed to my forehead, in which my very brain seemed throbbing. As I looked up at her, she stooped and gathered me to her bosom.
"Do you know me now?" she asked in a whisper.
Then her voice broke, and the next instant she would have sunk down beside me, if I had not sprung to my feet and lifted her in my arms. While I held her thus, pressed close against me, something of her radiant strength entered into me, and I was aware of a power in myself that was neither hers nor mine, but the welding of the finer qualities in both our natures.
CHAPTER XXVI
THE RED FLAG AT THE GATE
Sally was not beside me when I awoke in the morning, nor was she sipping her coffee by the window, as I had sometimes found her doing when I slept late. Going downstairs an hour afterwards, I discovered her, for the first time since our marriage, awaiting me in the dining-room. In her dainty breakfast jacket of blue silk, with a bit of lace and ribbon framing her wreath of plaits, she appeared to my tired eyes as the embodied freshness and buoyancy of the morning. Would her sparkling gaiety endure, I wondered, through the monotonous days ahead, when poverty became, not a child's play, not a game tricked out by the imagination, but the sordid actuality of hard work and hourly self-denial?
"I am practising early rising, Ben," she said, "and it's astonishing what an appetite it gives one. I've made the coffee myself, and Aunt Mehitable has just taught me how to make yeast. One can never tell what may come useful, you know, and if we go to live somewhere in a jungle, which I'm quite prepared to do, you'd be glad to know that I could make yeast, wouldn't you?"
"I suppose so, sweetheart, and as a matter of fact," I added presently, "this is the best cup of coffee I've had for many a month."
Laughing merrily, she perched herself on the arm of my chair, and sipped out of the cup I held toward her. "Of course it is. So you've gained that much by losing everything. It's very strange, Ben, and you may consider it presumptuous, but I've a profound conviction somewhere in the bottom of my heart that I can do everything better than anybody else, if I once turn my hand to it. At this minute I haven't a doubt that my yeast is better than Aunt Mehitable's. I'm going to cook dinner, too, and she'll be positively jealous of my performance. How do we know whether or not we'll meet any cooks in the jungle? And if we do, they'll probably be tigers – "
"Oh, Sally, Sally! You think it play now, but what will you feel when you know it's earnest?"
"Of course it's earnest. Do you imagine I'd get out of my bed at seven o'clock and cut up a slimy potato if it wasn't earnest? That may be your idea of play, but it's not mine."
"And you expect to flutter about a stove in a pale blue breakfast jacket and a lace cap?"
"Just as long as they last. When they go, I suppose I'll have to take to calico, but it will be pretty calico, and pink. Pink calico don't cost a penny more than drab – and there's one thing I positively decline to do, even in a jungle, and that is look ugly."
"You couldn't if you tried, my beauty."
"Oh, yes, I could – I could look hideous – any woman could if she tried. But as long as it doesn't cost any more, you've no objection to my cooking in pink instead of drab, I suppose?"
"I've an objection to your cooking in anything. Another cup of coffee, please."
"Ben."
"Yes, dear."
"You never drank but one of Aunt Mehitable's."
"I'm aware of it, and I'm aware of something else. It's worth being poor, Sally, to be poor with you."
"Then give me another taste of your coffee. But you don't call this being poor, do you, you silly boy? – with all this beautiful mahogany that I can use for a mirror? This isn't any fun in the world. Just wait until I spread the cloth over a pine table. Then we'll have something to laugh at sure enough, Ben."
"And I thought you'd cry!"
"You thought a great many very foolish things, my dear. You even thought I'd married you because I wanted to be rich, and it seemed an easy way."
"Only it turned out to be an easier way of getting poor."
"Well, rich or poor, what I married you for, after all, was the essential thing."
"And you've got it, sweetheart?"
"Of course I've got it. If I didn't have it, do you think I'd be able to laugh at a pine table?"
"If I were only sure you realised it!"
"You'll be sure enough when we are in the midst of it, and we'll be in the midst of it, I don't doubt, in a little while. I've been thinking pretty hard since last night, and this is what I worked out while I was making yeast."
"Let's have it, then."
"Now, the first thing we've got to do is to get out of debt, isn't it?"
"The very first thing, if it can be managed."
"We'll manage it this way. The furniture and the silver and my jewels must all be sold, of course; that's easy. But even after we've done that, there'll still be a great big burden to carry, I suppose?"
"Pretty big, I'm afraid, for your shoulders."
"Oh, we'll pay it every bit in the end. We won't go bankrupt. You'll go back to the railroad on a salary, and we'll begin to pinch on the spot."
"Yes, but times are hard and salaries are low."
"Anyway they're salaries, there's that much to be said for them. And while we're pinching as hard as we can pinch, we'll move over to Church Hill and rent two or three rooms in the old house with the enchanted garden. All the servants will have to go except Aunt Euphronasia, who couldn't go very far, poor thing, because she's rheumatic and can't stand on her feet. She can sit still very well, however, and rock the baby, and I'll look after the rooms and get the meals – I'm glad they'll be simple ones – and we'll put by every penny that we can save."
"The mere interest on the debt will take almost as much as we can save. There'll be some arrangement made, of course, and the payments will be easy, but there's one thing I'm determined on, and that is that I'll pay it, every cent, if I live. Then, too, there's chance, you know. Something may turn up – something almost always turns up to a man like myself."
"Well, if it turns up, we'll welcome it with open arms. But in the meantime we'll see if we can't scrape along without it. I'm going over this morning to look for rooms. How soon, Ben, do you suppose they will evict us?"
"Does there exist a woman," I demanded sternly, "who can be humorous over her own eviction?"
"It's better to be humorous over one's own than over one's neighbour's, isn't it? And besides, a laugh may help things, but tears never do. I was born laughing, mamma always said."
"Then laugh on, sweetheart."
I had risen from the table, and was moving toward the door, when she caught my arm.
"There's only one thing I'll never, never consent to," she said, "you remember Dolly?"
"Your old mare?"
"I've pensioned her, you know, and I'll pay that pension as long as she lives if we both have to starve."
"You shall do it if we're hanged and drawn for it – and now, Sally, I must be off to my troubles!"
"Then, good-by and be brave. Oh, Ben, my dearest, what is the matter?"
"It's my head. I've been worrying too much, and it's gone back on me like that twice in the last few days."
I went out hurriedly, convinced that even failure wasn't quite so bad as it had appeared from a distance; and Sally, following me to the door, stood smiling after me as I went down the block toward the car line. Looking back at the corner, I saw that she was still standing on the threshold, with the sun in her eyes and her head held high under the ruffle of lace and ribbon that framed her hair.
The street was filled with people that morning, and at the end of the first block Bonny Page nodded to me jauntily, as she passed on her early ride with Ned Marshall. Turning, almost unconsciously, my eyes followed her graceful, very erect figure, in its close black habit, swaying so perfectly with the motion of her chestnut mare. An immeasurable, wind-blown space seemed to stretch between us, and the very sound of the horse's hoofs on the cobblestones in the street came to me, faint and thin, as if it had floated back from some remote past which I but dimly remembered. I had never felt, even when standing at Bonny's side, that I was within speaking distance of her, and to-day, while I looked after the vanishing horses, I knew that odd, baffling sensation of struggling to break through an inflexible, yet invisible barrier. Why was it that I who had won Sally should still remain so hopelessly divided from all that to which Sally by right and by nature belonged?
Farther down the two great sycamores, still gaunt and bare as skeletons, stood out against a sky of intense blueness; and on the crooked pavement beneath, the shadows, fine and delicate as lace-work, rippled gently in the wind that blew straight in from the river. Looking up from under the silvery boughs, I saw the wire cage of the canary between the parted curtains, and beyond it the pale oval face of Miss Mitty, with its grave, set smile, so like the smile of the painted Blands and Fairfaxes that hung, in massive frames, on the drawing-room walls. In the midst of my own ruin an impulse of compassion entered my heart. The vacancy of the old grey house was like the vacancy of a tomb in which the ashes have scattered, and the one living spirit seemed that of the canary singing joyously in his wire cage. Something in the song brought Sally to my mind as she had appeared that morning at breakfast, and I felt again the soft, comforting touch of the hand she had laid on my face. Then I turned my eyes to the street, and saw George Bolingbroke coming slowly toward me, beyond the last great sycamore, which grew midway of the bricks. At the sight of him all that had comforted or supported me crumbled and fell. In its place came that sharp physical soreness – like the soreness from violent action – that the shock of my failure had brought. I, who had meant so passionately to win in the race, was suddenly crippled. Money, I had said, was all that I had to give, and yet I was beggared now even of that. Shorn of my power, what remained to me that would make me his match?
He came up, taking his cigar from his mouth as he stopped, and flicking the ashes away, while he stood looking at me with an expression of sympathy which he struggled in vain, I saw, to dissemble. On his finely coloured, though rather impassive features, there was the same darkening of a carefully suppressed emotion – the same lines of anger drawn, not by temper, but by suffering – that I had seen first at the club when his favourite hunter had died, and next on the day when the General had spoken to him, in my presence, of my engagement to Sally. Under his short dark mustache, his thin, nervous lips were set closely together.
"I'm awfully cut up, Ben," he said, "I declare I don't know when I was ever so cut up about anything before."
"I'm cut up too, George, like the deuce, but it doesn't appear to help matters, somehow."
"That's the worst thing about being a man of affairs like you – or like Uncle George," he observed, making an amiable effort to assure me that even in the hour of adversity, I still held my coveted place in the General's class; "when the crash comes, you big ones have to pay the piper, while the rest of us small fry manage to go scot-free."
It was put laboriously, but beneath the words I felt the force of that painful sympathy, too strong for concealment, and yet not strong enough to break through the inherited habit of self-command. The General had broken through, I acknowledged, but then was not the very greatness of the great man the expression of an erratic departure from traditions rather than of the perfect adherence to the racial type?
"And the louder the music the bigger the cost of the piper," I observed, with a laugh.
"Oh, you'll come out all right," he rejoined cheerfully, "things are never so bad as they might be."
"Well, I don't know that there's much comfort in reflecting that a thunder-storm might have been accompanied by an earthquake."
For a moment he stood in silence watching the end of his cigar, which went out in his hand. Then without meeting my eyes he asked in a voice that had a curiously muffled sound: —
"It's rough on Sally, isn't it? How does she stand it?"
"As she stands everything – like an angel out of heaven."
"Yes, you're right – she is an angel," he returned, still without looking into my face. An instant later, as if in response to an impulse which for once rose superior to the dead weight of custom, he blurted out with a kind of suffering violence, "I say, Ben, you know it's really awful. I'm so cut up about it I don't know what to do. I wish you'd let me help you out of this hole till you're on your feet. I've got nobody on me, you see, and I can't spend half of my income."
For the first time in our long acquaintance the tables were turned; it was George who was awkward now, and I who was perfectly at my ease.
"I can't do that, George," I said quietly, "but I'm grateful to you all the same. You're a first-rate chap."
We shook hands with a grip, and while he still lingered to strike a match and light the fresh cigar he had taken from his case, the little yellow flame followed, like an illuminated pointer, the expression of suffering violence which showed so strangely upon his face. Then, tossing the match into the gutter, he went on his way, while I passed the great scarred body of the sycamore and hurried down the long hill, which I never descended without recalling, as the General had said, that I had once "toted potatoes for John Chitling."
At the beginning of the next block, I saw the miniature box hedge and the clipped yew in the little garden of Dr. Theophilus, and as I turned down the side street, the face of the old man looked at me from the midst of some leafless red currant bushes that grew in clumps at the end of the walk.
"Come in, Ben, come in a minute," he called, beaming at me over his lowered spectacles, "there's a thing or two I should like to say."
As I entered the garden and walked along the tiny path, bordered by oyster shells, to the red currant bushes beyond, he laid his pruning-knife on the ground, and sat down on an old bench beside a little green table, on which a sparrow was hopping about. On his seventy-fifth birthday he had resigned his profession to take to gardening, and I had heard from no less an authority than the General that "that old fool Theophilus was spending more money in roses than Mrs. Clay was making out of pickles."
"What is it, doctor?" I asked, for, oppressed by my own burdens, I waited a little impatiently to hear "the thing or two" he wanted to say.
"You see I've given up people, Ben, and taken to roses," he began, while I stood grinding my heel into the gravelled walk; "and it's a good change, too, when you come to my years, there's no doubt of that. If you weed and water them and plant an occasional onion about their roots you can make roses what you want – but you can't people – no, not even when you've helped to bring them into the world. No matter how straight they come at birth, they're all just as liable as not to take an inward crank and go crooked before the end." He looked thoughtfully at the sparrow hopping about on the green table, and his face, beautiful with the wisdom of more than seventy years, was illumined by a smile which seemed in some way a part of the April sunshine flooding the clumps of red currant bushes and the miniature box. "George – I mean old George – was telling me about you, Ben," he went on after a minute, "and as soon as I heard of your troubles, I said to Tina – 'We've got a roof and we've got a bite, so they'll come to us.' What with Tina's pickling and preserving we manage to keep a home, my boy, and you're more than welcome to share it with us – you and Sally and your little Benjamin – "