“Well, now, we’ve got a farm that we’re a trying to sell, and if we do sell it, I’ll have my daughter come down here, and enter the college. If we don’t sell the farm, we’ve got a brindle cow that’ll fetch fifty dollars anyway, and that’ll pay for one quarter!”
The farmer and his wife finally took their departure, thoroughly convinced that they had seen the only private college in the oil country. The old lady afterward learned what sort of a college it was, and she concluded that she would not send her sixteen-year-old daughter to be educated by “Professor Hogan.”
Ben’s absence from Kitty led him at times to fits of jealousy, and in one of these he drove one night to Pittsburg, a distance of forty miles. Reaching the city at six o’clock in the morning, he proceeded at once to his house, entered through a back window, and stole quietly into his mistress’s room. There his suspicions found abundant confirmation! In the bed with Kitty was a girl, both wrapped in sleep. Ben drew his revolver, with the intention of committing a double murder; but the weapon missed fire, and in another moment Kitty had sprung from the bed.
She soon pacified her infuriated lover. The girl, she explained, was her country cousin, Julia by name, who had come to the house and spent the evening in opening champagne. Both she and the “cousin” had partaken so freely of the wine that they became drowsy, and had so fallen asleep on the same bed.
Cousins, and especially country cousins, are, as we know, a privileged class; and so Ben concluded that he would permit Kitty’s friend to remain where she was. It may be mentioned that this little trip cost our hero the comfortable sum of one thousand dollars, for he remained in Pittsburg long enough to visit a number of faro banks, and to open several baskets of wine. He concluded, upon his return to Petrolia, that country cousins were too expensive luxuries to be indulged in often, and jealousy didn’t pay.
CHAPTER XVI.
Ben as a Politician—Elected Burgess of Petrolia, but Cheated out of the Office—Goes to Queen City—Pleasure Trip West—Preparations to fight Tom Allen in St. Louis.
Not long after Ben’s return to Petrolia from the country cousin trip, a couple of fellows came into his place—they were residents of the town of Brookville—and claimed that on a previous visit, they had been cheated out of four hundred dollars in the house. This was a lie, cut out of the whole cloth.