After dinner John went to his room and David and his sister seated
themselves on the "verandy." Mr. Harum lighted a cigar and enjoyed his
tobacco for a time in silence, while Mrs. Bixbee perused, with rather
perfunctory diligence, the columns of her weekly church paper.
"I seen a sight fer sore eyes this mornin'," quoth David presently.
"What was that?" asked Aunt Polly, looking up over her glasses.
"Claricy Verjoos fer one part on't," said David.
"The Verjooses hev come, hev they? Wa'al, that's good. I hope she'll
come up an' see me."
David nodded. "An' the other part on't was," he said, "she an' that
young feller of our'n was walkin' together, an' a putty slick pair they
made too."
"Ain't she purty?" said Mrs. Bixbee.
"They don't make 'em no puttier," affirmed David; "an' they was a nice
pair. I couldn't help thinkin'," he remarked, "what a nice hitch up
they'd make."
"Guess the' ain't much chance o' that," she observed.
"No, I guess not either," said David.
"He hain't got anythin' to speak of, I s'pose, an' though I reckon
she'll hev prop'ty some day, all that set o' folks seems to marry money,
an' some one's alwus dyin' an' leavin' some on 'em some more. The' ain't
nothin' truer in the Bible," declared Mrs. Bixbee with conviction, "'n
that sayin' thet them that has gits."
"That's seemin'ly about the way it runs in gen'ral," said David.
"It don't seem right," said Mrs. Bixbee, with her eyes on her brother's
face. "Now there was all that money one o' Mis' Elbert Swayne's
relations left her last year, an' Lucy Scramm, that's poorer 'n
poverty's back kitchin, an' the same relation to him that Mis' Swayne
was, only got a thousan' dollars, an' the Swaynes rich already. Not but
what the thousan' was a godsend to the Scramms, but he might jest as
well 'a' left 'em comf'tibly off as not, 'stid of pilin' more onto the
Swaynes that didn't need it."
"Does seem kind o' tough," David observed, leaning forward to drop his
cigar ash clear of the veranda floor, "but that's the way things goes,
an' I've often had to notice that a man'll sometimes do the foolishist
thing or the meanest thing in his hull life after he's dead."
"You never told me," said Mrs. Bixbee, after a minute or two, in which
she appeared to be following up a train of reflection, "much of anythin'
about John's matters. Hain't he ever told you anythin' more 'n what
you've told me? or don't ye want me to know? Didn't his father leave
anythin'?"
"The' was a little money," replied her brother, blowing out a cloud of
smoke, "an' a lot of unlikely chances, but nothin' to live on."
"An' the' wa'n't nothin' for 't but he had to come up here?" she
queried.
"He'd 'a' had to work on a salary somewhere, I reckon," was the reply.
"The' was one thing," added David thoughtfully after a moment, "that'll
mebbe come to somethin' some time, but it may be a good while fust, an'
don't you ever let on to him nor nobody else 't I ever said anythin'
about it."
"I won't open my head to a livin' soul," she declared. "What was it?"
"Wa'al, I don't know 's I ever told ye," he said, "but a good many years
ago I took some little hand in the oil bus'nis, but though I didn't git
in as deep as I wish now 't I had, I've alwus kept up a kind of int'rist
in what goes on in that line."
"No, I guess you never told me," she said. "Where you goin'?" as he got
out of his chair.
"Goin' to git my cap," he answered. "Dum the dum things! I don't believe
the's a fly in Freeland County that hain't danced the wild kachuky on my
head sence we set here. Be I much specked?" he asked, as he bent his
bald poll for her inspection.
"Oh, go 'long!" she cried, as she gave him a laughing push.
"'Mongst other-things," he resumed, when he had returned to his chair
and relighted his cigar, "the' was a piece of about ten or twelve
hunderd acres of land down in Pennsylvany havin' some coal on it, he
told me he understood, but all the timber, ten inch an' over, 'd ben
sold off. He told me that his father's head clerk told him that the old
gentleman had tried fer a long time to dispose of it; but it called fer
too much to develop it, I guess; 't any rate he couldn't, an' John's
got it to pay taxes on."
"I shouldn't think it was wuth anythin' to him but jest a bill of
expense," observed Mrs. Bixbee.
"Tain't now," said David, "an' mebbe won't be fer a good while; still,
it's wuth somethin', an' I advised him to hold onto it on gen'ral
princ'ples. I don't know the pertic'ler prop'ty, of course," he
continued, "but I do know somethin' of that section of country, fer I
done a little prospectin' 'round there myself once on a time. But it
wa'n't in the oil territory them days, or wa'n't known to be, anyway."
"But it's eatin' itself up with taxes, ain't it?" objected Mrs. Bixbee.
"Wa'al," he replied, "it's free an' clear, an' the taxes ain't so very
much--though they do stick it to an outside owner down there--an' the
p'int is here: I've alwus thought they didn't drill deep enough in that
section. The' was some little traces of oil the time I told ye of, an'
I've heard lately that the's some talk of a move to test the territory
agin, an', if anythin' was to be found, the young feller's prop'ty might
be wuth somethin', but," he added, "of course the' ain't no tellin'."