“I’ve no idea,” I hastened to add; fearing the senator had followed Coe’s wink.
“Thirty thousand dollars,” answered General McBride, as if it were a game of “School-teacher.” “And they sold three hundred acres for——”
“Fifteen hundred thousand dollars,” resumed Judge Hankinson, with intense solemnity.
“Paper?” said Tim Healy.
“Cash, Captain Healy,” said the judge, fiercely, “cash.”
“I want to know!—Was that the lot you bought of Widow Enraghty, judge?”
A roar of laughter greeted Tim’s answer. People tipped back their chairs, slapping their thighs; the Langworthy baby woke up and cried, and even the judge screwed up his whiskey-softened old face in vain.
“Tell us about it, judge,” said Raoul, who had come back from the engine and was peering over our shoulders. “I’m a young lawyer, and I want to know these tricks.”
“Young man,” said the judge, “I’ll tell you, and let it be a warning to you when you’re married, to be honest and say so” (Raoul blushed violently). “The fact was, I had been acquainted with the widow Enraghty more than fifty years—her husband had got killed in the forties, an’ she was sixty-five if she was a day, and she owned that valuable corner lot opposite the new Court-house and by the building of the Board of Trade.” (“Not built yet,” whispered Coe to me.) “I’d been dickering with her for weeks; but I stood at four thousand, and she wanted five. Now I rode up that morning (it was a fine day; warm and spring-like, and I felt rather sanguine) and I said, ‘What’s your price, Mrs. Enraghty, to-day?’ ‘Six thousand,’ said she. This raise made me kind o’ nervous, an’ I got rash. ‘I’ll give you three thousand,’ said I, ‘cash.’ ‘Here’s your deed,’ says Widow Enraghty. And I declare she had it all ready. I looked at it carefully; it seemed all right, and I paid her the money. I kinder noticed there was a young fellow sittin’ in the room. Well, sir!”
“Well, judge?” The judge’s manner grew impressive.