“But don’t you see it can’t be ours, it can’t be a home, when there’s a debt of honor between us and every acre of it.”
“You’re in no way involved in that debt,” cried out my lord and master, with a trace of the old battling light in his eyes.
“I’m so involved in it that I’m going to give up the glory of a two-story house with hardwood floors and a windmill and a laundry chute and a real bathroom, before that English cousin of yours can find out the difference between a spring-lamb and a jack-rabbit!” I resolutely informed him. “And I’m going to do it without a whimper. Do you know what we’re going to do, O lord and master? We’re going to take our kiddies and our chattels and our precious selves over to that Harris Ranch, and there we’re going to begin over again just as we did nearly four years ago!” Dinky-Dunk tried to stop me, but I warned him aside. “Don’t think I’m doing anything romantic. I’m doing something so practical that the more I think of it the more I see it’s the only thing possible.”
He sat looking at me as though he had forgotten what my features were like and was, just discovering that my nose, after all, hadn’t really been put on straight. Then the old battling light grew stronger than ever in his eyes.
“It’s not going to be the only thing possible,” he declared. “And I’m not going to make you pay for my mistakes. Not on your life! I could have swung the farm lands, all right, even though they did have me with my back to the wall, if only the city stuff hadn’t gone dead—so dead that to-day you couldn’t even give it away. I’m not an embezzler. Allie sent me out that money to take a chance with, and by taking a double chance I honestly thought I could get her double returns. As you say, it was a gambler’s chance. But the cards broke against me. The thing that hurts is that I’ve probably just about cleaned the girl out.”
“How do you know that?” I asked, wondering why I was finding it so hard to sympathize with that denuded and deluded English cousin.
“Because I know what’s happened to about all of the older families and estates over there,” retorted Dinky-Dunk. “The government has pretty well picked them clean.”
“Could I see your Cousin Allie’s letters?”
“What good would it do?” asked the dour man across the table from me. “The fat’s in the fire, and we’ve got to face the consequences.”
“And that’s exactly what I’ve been trying to tell you, you foolish old calvanistic autocrat! We’ve got to face the consequences, and the only way to do it is to do it the way I’ve said.”