"She can't collect what you haven't got, can she?" Quin asked.
"She can sell the roof over our heads," said Papa Claude, with streaming eyes lifted to the object referred to. "She can scatter my beloved family and drive me back into the treadmill of teaching. And all through this blessed, innocent child, who would give all she has in the world to see her poor old grandfather happy!"
Again Eleanor, moved to a passion of sympathy, flung her arms around him, declaring that if they made him pay the note she would refund every penny of it the day she was twenty-one.
But Papa Claude was not to be consoled.
"It will be too late," he said hopelessly. "All I required was one year more in which to retrieve my fortunes and achieve my life ambition. And now, with success almost within my grasp, the goal within sight, this cruel blow, this bolt from the blue——"
"Haven't you got any other property or stocks or insurance that you could turn over?" asked Quin, who felt that the occasion demanded numerical figures rather than figures of speech.
"Only a small farm out near Anchordale, which belonged to my precious wife's father. It is quite as worthless as he was, poor dear! I have offered it repeatedly in payment, but they refused to consider it."
"Is there a house on it?" persisted Quin.
"Yes—an uninhabitable old stone structure that has stood there for nearly a century. For years I have tried in vain to rent or sell it. I have left no stone unturned, Quinby. I know I am regarded as a visionary, a dreamer, but I assure you——"
"What about the ground?"