“But why should we sell that?” I asked. Alabama Ranch, I knew, was in my name, and I had always regarded it as a sort of nest-egg for the children. 128 It was something put by for a rainy day, something to fall back on, if ill-luck ever overtook us again.
“Because I can double and treble every dollar we get out of it, inside of a year,” averred Dinky-Dunk.
“But how am I to know that?” I contended, hating to seem hard and selfish and narrow in the teeth of an ambitious man’s enterprise.
“You’d have to take my word for it,” retorted my husband.
“But we’ve more than ourselves to consider,” I contended, knowing he’d merely scoff at that harping on the old string of the children.
“That’s why I intend to get out of this rut!” he cried with unexpected bitterness. And a few minutes later he made the suggestion that he’d deed Casa Grande entirely over to me if I’d consent to the sale of Alabama Ranch and give him a chance to swing the bigger plans he intended to swing.
The suggestion rather took my breath away. My rustic soul, I suppose, is stupidly averse to change. But I realize that when you travel in double-harness you can’t forever pull back on your team-mate. So I’ve asked Dinky-Dunk to give me a few days to think the thing over.