"Yes."
"I expect you'd sell the prop'ty if you got a good chance, wouldn't ye?"
"With the utmost pleasure," said John emphatically.
"Wa'al, I've got a notion they'll buy it of ye," said David, "if it's handled right. I wouldn't lease it if it was mine an' I wanted to sell it, an' yet, in the long run, you might git more out of it—an' then agin you mightn't," he added.
"I don't know anything about it," said John, putting his handkerchief to his mouth in a fit of coughing. David looked at him with a frown.
"I ben aware fer some time that the' was a movement on foot in your direction," he said. "You know I told ye that I'd ben int'ristid in the oil bus'nis once on a time; an' I hain't never quite lost my int'rist, though it hain't ben a very active one lately, an' some fellers down there have kep' me posted some. The' 's ben oil found near where you're located, an' the prospectin' points your way. The hull thing has ben kep' as close as possible, an' the holes has ben plugged, but the oil is there somewhere. Now it's like this: If you lease on shares an' they strike the oil on your prop'ty, mebbe it'll bring you more money; but they might strike, an' agin they mightn't. Sometimes you git a payin' well an' a dry hole only a few hunderd feet apart. Nevertheless they want to drill your prop'ty. I know who the parties is. These fellers that wrote this letter are simply actin' for 'em."
The speaker was interrupted by another fit of coughing, which left the sufferer very red in the face, and elicited from him the word which is always greeted with laughter in a theater.
"Say," said David, after a moment, in which he looked anxiously at his companion, "I don't like that cough o' your'n."
"I don't thoroughly enjoy it myself," was the rejoinder.
"Seems to be kind o' growin' on ye, don't it?"