"Now, my son, don't you get to going without your sleep," began his mother.
"And wasn't it lucky about my sending that note to George!" said Psyche. "Here in this morning's paper we find he isn't going to be Lord Casselthorpe, after all. What could I have done if we hadn't lost the money?" From which it might be inferred that certain people who had declared Miss Bines to be very hard-headed were not so far wrong as the notorious "casual observer" is very apt to be.
"Never you mind, sis," said her brother, cheerfully, "we'll be all right yet. You wait a little, and hear Uncle Peter take back what he's said about me. Uncle Peter, I'll have you taking off that hat of yours every time you get sight of me, in about a year."
He went again over the plans. The income from the One Girl was to be used in developing the other properties: the stock ranch up on the Bitter Root, the other mines that had been worked but little and with crude appliances; the irrigation and land-improvement enterprises, and the big timber tracts.
"I got something of an idea of it when Uncle Peter took me around summer before last, and I learned a lot more getting the stuff together with Coplen. Now, I'm ready to buckle down to it." He looked at Uncle Peter, hungry for a word of encouragement to soothe the hurts the old man had put upon him.
But all Uncle Peter would say was, "That sounds very well," compelling the inference that he regarded sound and substance as phenomena not necessarily related.
"But give me a chance, Uncle Peter. Just don't jump on me too hard for a year!"
"Well, I know that country. There's big chances for a young man with brains—understand?—that has got all the high-living nonsense blasted out of his upper levels—but it takes work. You may do something—there are white blackbirds—but you're on a nasty piece of road-bed—curves all down on the outside—wheels flatted under every truck, and you've had her down in the corner so long I doubt if you can even slow up, say nothin' of reversin'. And think of me gettin' fooled that way at my time of life," he continued, as if in confidence to himself. "But then, I always was a terrible poor judge of human nature."
"Well, have your own way; but I'll fool you again, while you're coppering me. You watch, that's all I ask. Just sit around and talk wise about me all you want to, but watch. Now, I must go down and get to work with Fouts. Thank the Lord, we didn't have to welsh either, any more than Mrs. Give-up there did."
"You won't touch any more stock; you won't get that money from Shepler?"