“We have come to see you,” I began, “about buying the House of the Five Pines.”
The judge marked the book he was reading and laid it down, looking at us mildly, without surprise.
“I’ll do all I can for you,” he replied, with what seemed to me undue emphasis on the “can.” “Won’t you come up and set down? We might talk it over, anyway.”
“Talk it over!” I repeated impatiently, rocking violently in one of his big chairs. “How much is it, and how soon can I get it?”
I felt Ruth and the judge exchanging glances over my head.
“It ain’t quite so simple as that,” he said quietly, weighing me, as all these Cape Cod people do, with unveiled, appraising eyes. “Two thousand dollars is all I’m asking for it now, as trustee—”
“I thought it was three!” Ruth could not help exclaiming. “I was told you were holding it for three.”
“I’m holding it,”—his big leathery face broke into the lines of a smile—“for Mattie ‘Charles T. Smith’ to move out. That’s all I’m holding it for. I could ’a’ sold it five times a year in the last five years, if it hadn’t been for her. And it’s gettin’ a name now. I’d be glad to be rid of it.” He passed his heavy hand over his face speculatively, and held his lower jaw down as he weighed me once more. “I’d be real glad to get shet with the whole deal!”
“I’ll take it,” said I.
Even Ruth looked startled. She remembered what I did not, in my sudden enthusiasm; that I had yet to get my husband’s consent to living here—and the money. But it seemed so ridiculously cheap that I was already in that cold real-estate sweat which breaks out on the novice in his first venture for fear that some one else, between night and morning or while he goes for his lunch, will get the treasure that he has set his heart on.