“Correct! Move up one girl! I never saw a merer stranger than you, Mr. Ducky. You’re so mere that none know you but to love you. Why, the boys you’ve met up with out on the range couldn’t even be hired to kill you, and they had to offer me the chance. Durned if I believe I’m going to do it myself! G’wan now; let’s hear the sad story of your life.”
Chapter IV
“WHEN I think of that poor little answer waiting all alone for its own dear riddle,” said Ducky, much affected, “I can’t refuse. But I’ll only hit the high places. Uncle Roger is dead, and it isn’t a pleasant stunt to rake up all his faults and catalogue ’em.”
He reflected a little while.
“My uncle put me through college and named me as his sole heir, for the reason—I had it from his own lips—that he lost father’s little property for him. Uncle Roger was the elder brother, head of the family, and all that.
“He had a mighty high idea of the Drakes, did Uncle Roger, and he never liked my mother. To the day of her death he was barely civil to her. That’s what I couldn’t forgive in him, for all his cold and formal kindness to me. Damn it! He ignored her and she was worth a hundred like Roger Drake.
“From all accounts, my Uncle Roger was a warm baby at college. He was the only original Ducky Drake; all others were base imitations. Come back to li’l’ ol’ N’ York—lawyer; man about town; clubs; Tottie Twinkletoes; birds and bottles at proper temperatures! New York took his roll away from him.
“Did he buckle down to business and, by frugal industry—and so on? He did not. He faded away into the dim blue and the tall green. Honest, Jonesy, this is rotten of me—knockin’ like this! But if you’re going to help me play Money, money, who’s got Uncle Ducky’s money? this is what you want to know. It was the keynote of his character that he wanted all the beastly junk money will buy, but wasn’t willing to hop out and hustle for the money. He wanted it quick, easy and often.”
“Mind if I take notes?”
“’Eavings, no! Well, six years afterward he came back. A distant relative—great-aunt or something—had left him a sizable legacy. Business of killing calf. So he took his money and poor old dad’s and set to work to found an estate. Mother didn’t know about it. I happened along about that time and she took quite a fancy to me; didn’t notice other things.