She was sometimes tempted to mention the extent of his holdings, and put the acreage well up into the thousands, but since Miss Macpherson was a truthful woman with a sensitive conscience, she contented herself with declaring, merely:
"My nephew, Wallace Macpherson, has a large ranch, oh, a very large place—several days' ride around it."
He was all she had, and blood is far thicker than water. She was hungry for a sight of him, and every day increased her yearning. While letters from him now arrived regularly, he said nothing in any of them of coming to Florida. His extensive interests, she presumed, detained him, and he was too good a business man to neglect affairs that needed him.
She had promised to go to him next summer, but next summer was a long way off and there were times when she was strongly tempted to make the journey in winter in spite of the northern blizzards of which, while fanning themselves, they read with gusto.
A blizzard was raging at present, according to the paper from which Mr. Appel was reading the headlines aloud to the group on the veranda. All trains were stalled west of the Mississippi and there was three feet of snow on the level in Denver.
"That reminds me——"
Only too well Mr. Cone knew what Mr. Budlong's remark portended. The hotel proprietor was having an interesting conversation with Mrs. Appel upon the relative merits of moth-preventatives, but he arose abruptly.
Mr. Budlong squared away again.
"That reminds me that I was wondering this morning how deep the snow would be at that point where Mr. Stott slid down the glacier in the gold-pan. By the way, Mr. Cone, have you heard that story? It's a good one."
Edging toward the doorway, Mr. Cone fairly chattered in his vehemence: