A page with letters in his hand had entered the room. He served the young American ladies first as their tips were frequent and munificent, particularly Ora’s. The other people in the room were English and Italian.
Ida’s letters were from Ruby and Pearl. Ora’s from Mark, Professor Becke, and two of her English friends. She opened her husband’s first. It contained an account of the threatened loss of her mine, her narrow escape, and Gregory’s rescue. It was graphically written. Mark fancied himself as a letter writer and never was averse from impressing his clever wife.
Ora’s face flushed as she read; she lost her breath once or twice. She pictured every expression of Gregory’s eyes as he perforated the clerk; her heart hammered its admiration. She was too thoroughly Montanan and the daughter of her father to be horrified at bribery and corruption. For the moment she forgot gratitude in her exultation that he had triumphed over the mightiest trust in the country. But before she finished the letter she sighed and set her lips. She handed it deliberately to Ida.
“Here is an account of the first development,” she said casually. “It will interest you.”
Ida read the letter hastily. “Well, they caught him napping after all,” she said with profound dissatisfaction. “He dreams too much, that’s what. He’s got a practical side all right, but he isn’t on the job all the time. I’d like to write and tell him what I think of him but guess I’d better keep my mouth shut.”
“It was Mark’s fault as much as Mr. Compton’s—more. He should have had a new map made of my claim; or, if he did have one made, he should have studied it more carefully. Anybody to look at it would assume that it touched the boundary line of your—Mr. Compton’s ranch.”
“Well, Greg’ll get out of it some way. When he does sit up and take notice he doesn’t so much as wink, and so far as he knew or cared the rest of the world might have waltzed off into space. Lucky it hit him to buy the house and send that last five thousand before he snapped close on Amalgamated——”
“What does Miss Miller have to say?”
“Nothing much but ecstasies over my house. The Murphys had taste, it seems, so I won’t have to do a thing to it. Say, Ora, don’t you feel as if you’d like to go back?”
Ora looked up and her face turned white. “Go back? I thought you wanted to stay over here for a year, at least. We haven’t half seen Europe yet—to say nothing of Egypt.”