“You should own a car, Uncle Jabez,” urged Ruth.
“Now, stop that! Stop that, Niece Ruth! I won’t hear to no such foolishness. You show me how I can make money riding up and down the Lumano in a pesky motor-car, and maybe I’ll do like Alviry wants me to, and buy one of the contraptions.” “Hullo, now!” added the miller suddenly. “Who might this be?”
Ruth turned to see one of the very motor-cars that Uncle Jabez so scorned (or pretended to) stopping before the wide door of the mill itself.
But as it was the man driving the roadster, rather than the car itself, Uncle Jabez had spoken of, Ruth gave her attention to him. He was a ruddy, tubby little man in a pin-check black and white suit, faced with silk on lapels and pockets—it really gave him a sort of minstrel-like appearance as though he should likewise have had his face corked—and he wore in a puffed maroon scarf a stone that flashed enough for half a dozen ordinary diamonds—whether it really was of the first water or not.
This man hopped out from back of the wheel of the roadster and came briskly up the graveled rise from the road to the door of the mill. He favored Ruth with a side glance and half smile that the girl of the Red Mill thought (she had seen plenty of such men) revealed his character very clearly. But he spoke to Uncle Jabez.
“I say, Pop, is this the place they call the Red Mill?”
“I calkerlate it is,” agreed the miller dryly. “Leastways, it’s the only Red Mill I ever heard tell on.”
“I reckoned I’d got to the right dump,” said the visitor cheerfully. “I understand there’s an Injun girl stopping here? Is that so?”
Uncle Jabez glanced at Ruth and got her permission to speak before he answered:
“I don’t know as it’s any of your business, Mister; but the Princess Wonota, of the Osage Nation, is stopping here just now. What might be your business with her?”