“I suppose so!”
“And she’s on her way out here?”
“She’s on her way out here to inspect a ranch which doesn’t exist!”
I sat for a full minute gaping into Dinky-Dunk’s woebegone face. And still again I had considerable thinking to do.
“Then we’ll make it exist,” I finally announced. But Dinky-Dunk, staring gloomily off into space, wasn’t even interested. They had stunned the spirit out of him. He wasn’t himself. They’d put him where even a well-turned Scotch scone couldn’t appeal to him.
“Listen,” I solemnly admonished. “If this Cousin Allie of yours is coming out here for a ranch, she’s got to be presented with one.”
“It sounds easy!” he said, not without mockery.
“And apparently the only way we can see that she’s given her money’s worth is to hand Casa Grande over to her. Surely if she takes this, bag and baggage, she ought to be half-satisfied.”
Dinky-Dunk looked up at me as though I were assailing him with the ravings of a mad-woman. He knew how proud I had always been of that prairie home of ours.
“Casa Grande is yours—yours and the kiddies,” he reminded me. “You’ve at least got that, and God knows you’ll need it now, more than ever, God knows I’ve at least kept my hands off that!”