"Why did you leave it? Do you like this better?"
"I like any new country. I like to explore."
"But you're settled for a while?"
"Well, I don't know—if my partner will take my interest, I think I'll shift along. I want to get into Alaska finally. I'd like to climb one of them high peaks."
Fred, who was seated in front, turned. "Mother wants to know what the mine paid last year—you tell her."
"It didn't pay much," replied Kelley, cautiously. "You see, we had some new machinery to put in and some roads to grade and one thing or another—I reckon it paid about"—he hesitated—"about three hundred a month. But it's going to do better this year."
Florence, who was studying the men sharply, then said, "You wrote you were getting about five dollars a day."
Fred's face showed distress. "I meant net," he said. "I didn't want to worry you about details of machinery and all that."
Kelley began to feel that the girl's ears and eyes were alert to all discrepancies, and he became cautious—so cautious that his pauses revealed more than his words. But the mother saw nothing, heard nothing, but the face and voice of her son, who pointed out the big mines that were still running and the famous ones that were "dead," and so kept her from looking too closely at the steep grades up which the car climbed.
At length, on the very crest of the high, smooth hill, they alighted and Fred led the way toward a rusty old hack that looked as much out of place on that wind-swept point as a Chinese pagoda.