"Mabel, my boy, can you lend me fifty dollars?"
Acres beheld Colonel Adams standing in the deep shadows at the top of the stairs. He wore a yellow seersucker coat, brown linen trousers, carpet slippers, with the toes of his right foot bandaged and exposed through a slit in the red leather. He was forlornly sober, pale, with his moustache drooping like a rooster's tail in the rain.
"Fifty dollars, Colonel!" exclaimed Acres.
"I'm absolutely obliged to have it, Mabel."
"Make it fifty cents and I'll be glad to accommodate you."
"Very well, fifty cents then. Thank you, Mabel. I'll just go down with this. No use to face Mike with half a dollar. He wants fifty."
"Shearing you, too?"
"No, you can't shear a sheep that's been plucked as clean as your hand. Prim keeps me mighty cool."
"What's he want with so much money, do you know?"
The Colonel limped forward very painfully, placed one hand upon Acres's shoulder, ogled Prim's door, and whispered: