"Huh! I doan' know. Erbout fifty sixty, I reckon. She will her prop'ty off so many times, dey won' be nottin lef to will, bimeby. 'Twas dat, though, Ephraim, I 'low, too. Mebbe—Does dey put erbout makin' wills in de papahs, boy?"
"I doan' know. Likely. Why, Dinah?"
"Cayse, warn't no res' twel Miss Betty done sent yo' Methusalem out to de drug-sto' fo' to buy de ebenin' one. Spec' she was lookin' had Massa Kiddah done got it printed right. Doan' know what she want o' papahs, when she ain't looked at one this long spell, scusin 'twas to find out dat."
But neither of them guessed that Mrs. Cecil's interest lay in a large-typed advertisement, offering five hundred dollars reward for the return of the lost, humble little Dorothy C. Nor that this sum would have been twice as great, had not the worldly wisdom of Kidder & Kidder been larger than that of their aristocratic client.
CHAPTER XIV
THE BITER BIT
Even healthy Dorothy had rarely slept as soundly as she did that night, there in the airy barn on her bed of hay; and she had lain down as soon as she had finished her brief letter to her mother—which like those that had gone before it would travel no further than Mrs. Stott's range fire.
She woke in the morning to find it much later than usual when she was roused and that it was only Jim who was calling her. He did so softly, yet with evident excitement; and as soon as possible the girl got out of her hostess's too big nightgown and into her own clothes, still fresh from yesterday's laundering. Then she opened the door and ran to the trough of water, used for the cattle; and after a liberal ducking of her curly head, shook herself dry—for want of a better towel. Afterwards, to the barnyard, calling eagerly:
"Jim! O Jim!"