“You’ll know all about oil before you’re through,” said Mr. Gordon suddenly. Then he laughed.
“It’s in the very air,” he explained. “We talk oil, think oil, and sometimes I think, we eat oil. Leastways I know I’ve tasted it in the air on more than one occasion.”
Betty had been silently turning something over in her mind.
“Isn’t there danger from fire?” she asked presently.
“There certainly is,” affirmed her uncle. “We’ve had one bad fire this season, and I don’t suppose the subject is ever out of our minds very long at a time. Sandbags are always kept ready, but let a well get to burning once, and all the sandbags in the world won’t stop it.”
“I wouldn’t want a well to burn,” said Bob slowly, “but if one should, I shouldn’t mind seeing it.”
“You wouldn’t see much but thick smoke,” rejoined Mr. Gordon. “I’ve some pictures of burning wells I’ll show you when I can get them out. Nothing but huge columns of heavy black smoke that smudges up the landscape.”
“Like the lamp that smoked one night when Mrs. Peabody turned it down too low—remember, Bob?” suggested Betty. “Next morning everything in the room was peppered with greasy soot.”
“Look ahead, and you’ll see the Watterby farm—‘place,’ in the vernacular of the countryside,” announced Mr. Gordon. “Unlike the Eastern farms, very few homes are named. There’s Grandma Watterby watching for us.”
Bob and Betty looked with interest. They saw a gaunt, plain house, two stories in height, without window blinds or porch of any sort, and if ever painted now so weather-beaten that the original color was indistinguishable. A few flowers bloomed around the doorstep but there was no attempt at a lawn. A huddle of buildings back of the house evidently made up the barns and out-houses, and chickens stalked at will in the roadside.