The old man threw a suspicious glance over his shoulder, then came a step nearer.
"I ain't tellin' this everywhere, Miss Cordelia, and I don't want you to say nothin'. You're goin' to Texas, they tell me."
"Yes, Mr. Hodges, I am." Cordelia tried to make her voice sound properly humble, but pride would vibrate through it.
"Well, I—" The man hesitated, looked around again suspiciously, then blurted out a storm of words with the rush of desperation. "I—years ago, Miss Cordelia, I let a man in Boston have a lot of money. He said 'twas goin' into an oil well out in Texas, and that when it came back there'd be a lot more with it a-comin' to me. So I let him have it. I liked Texas, anyhow—I'd been there as a boy."
"Yes," nodded Cordelia, smiling as she remembered the prairie schooner that was Fred's "boat."
"Well, for a while I did get money—dividends, he called 'em. Then it all stopped off short. They shut the man up in prison, and closed the office. And there's all my money! They do be sayin', too, that there ain't no such place as this oil well there—that is, not the way he said it was—so big and fine and promisin'. Well, now, of course I can't go to see, Miss Cordelia—an old man like me, all the way to Texas. But you are goin'. So I thought I'd just ask you to look around a little if you happened to hear anything about this well. Maybe you could go and see it, and then tell me. I've written down the name on this paper," finished the man, thrusting his trembling fingers into his pocket, and bringing out a small piece of not over-clean paper.
"Why, of—of course, Mr. Hodges," promised Cordelia, doubtfully, as she took the paper. "I'd love to do anything I could for you—anything! Only I'm afraid I don't know much about oil wells, you see. Do they look just like—water wells, with a pump or a bucket? Bertha's aunt has one of those on her farm."
"I don't know, child, I don't know," murmured the old man, shaking his head sadly, as he turned away. "Sometimes I think there ain't any such things, anyhow. But you'll do your best, I know. I can trust you!"
"Why, of course," returned Cordelia, earnestly, slipping the bit of paper into the envelope of Genevieve's letter in her hand.
In her own room that night Cordelia Wilson got out her list marked "Things to do in Texas," and studied it with troubled eyes. She had now one more item to add to it—and it was already so long!