“We can’t all trade on that man’s generosity!” I cried, without giving much thought to the manner in which I was expressing myself.
“Oh, that’s the way you feel about it!” retorted my husband. And I could see his face harden into Scotch granite. I could also see the look of perplexity in my small son’s eyes as he stood studying his father.
“Is there anything abnormal in my feeling the way I do?” I parried, resenting the beetling brow of the Dour Man.
“Not if you regard him as your personal and particular fairy god-father,” retorted my husband.
“I’ve no more reason for regarding him as that,” 127 I said as calmly as I could, “than I have for regarding him as a professional money-lender.”
Duncan must have seen from my face that it would be dangerous to go much further. So he merely shrugged a flippant shoulder.
“They tell me he’s got more money than he knows what to do with,” he said with a heavy jocularity which couldn’t quite rise.
“Then lightening his burdens is a form of charity we can scarcely afford to indulge in,” I none too graciously remarked. And I saw my husband’s face harden again.
“Well, I’ve got to have ready money and I’ve got to have it before the year’s out,” was his retort. He told me, when the air had cleared a little, that he’d have to open an office in Calgary as soon as harvesting was over. There was already too much at stake to take chances. Then he asked me if there were any circumstances under which I’d be willing to sell Casa Grande. And I told him, quite promptly and quite definitely, that there was none.
“Then how about the old Harris Ranch?” he finally inquired.