"I'm sure I don't know. This is certainly a hard year in the lumber trade."
"I don't believe it is as hard elsewhere as it is in Maine. My uncle, Jack Hoover, who owns a lumber camp out in Michigan, wrote that he was as busy as ever. He said I might come on if I couldn't find anything to do here."
"Why don't you go?"
Owen drew down the corners of his mouth into a peculiar pucker.
"You wouldn't ask that if you knew my Uncle Jack," he said.
"Anything wrong?"
"Uncle Jack is a worker—morning, noon, and night, and between times. He never knows when to stop, and he expects everybody around him to work just as hard or harder. Fact is, he's a regular slave driver. And in addition to that he's as close-fisted as Hen McNair."
"In that case, I don't wonder you don't want to engage with him," said Dale, with a laugh.
"Uncle Jack means well, but he never knows when to let up. I've heard my mother say that more than once. He was her step-brother. He started as a poor man, and when he went to Michigan he had less than a thousand dollars. Now he must be worth thirty or forty thousand, and maybe more."
"I don't believe you'll be worth that, Owen; not if you have to save it yourself."