“Oh, my back! and oh, my bones!”
“Then let somebody else save your back and bones, Aunt Alviry!” cried Ruth, putting her arms around the old housekeeper’s neck. “There! how good it is to see you again. Sit right down there. You are to play lady. I am going to get the breakfast.”
“But your Uncle Jabez wants hot muffins, my pretty,” objected Aunt Alvirah.
“And don’t you suppose anybody can make muffins but you?” queried Ruth, blithely. “I made ’em out to Silver Ranch. Maria, the Mexican cook, taught me. Even Uncle Jabez will like them made by my recipe—now you see if he doesn’t.”
And the miller certainly praised the muffins—by eating a full half dozen of them. Of course, he did not say audibly that they were good.
And yet, Uncle Jabez had a much more companionable air about him than he had ever betrayed before—at least, within the knowledge of Ruth Fielding. He smiled—and that not grimly—as the girl related some of her experiences during her wonderful summer vacation.
“It was a great trip—and wonderful,” she sighed, finally. “Of course, the last of it was rather spoiled by Mary Cox’s brother being so ill. And the doctors found, when they got the better of the fever, that his head had been hurt some months before, and that is why he had wandered about there, without writing East—either to his folks or to you, Uncle Jabez. But he’s all right now, and Mary expects to bring him home from Denver, where he stopped over, in a few days. She’ll be home in time for the opening of school, at least,” and here Ruth’s voice halted and her face changed color, while she looked beseechingly at Uncle Jabez.
The miller cleared his throat and looked at her. Aunt Alvirah stopped eating, too, and she and Ruth gazed anxiously at the flint-like face of the old man.
“I got a letter from that lawyer at Bullhide, Montana, two days ago, Niece Ruth,” said Uncle Jabez, in his harsh voice. “He has been going over the Tintacker affairs, and he has proved up on that young Cox’s report. The young chap is as straight as a string. The money he got from me is all accounted for. And according to the assayers the new vein Cox discovered will mill as high as two hundred dollars to the ton of ore. If we work it as a stock company it will make us money; but young Cox being in such bad shape physically, and his finances being as they are, we’ll probably decide to sell out to a syndicate of Denver people. Cox will close the contract with them before he comes East, it may be, and on such terms,” added Uncle Jabez with a satisfaction that he could not hide, “that it will be the very best investment I ever made.”
“Oh, Uncle!” cried Ruth Fielding.