"How much did you send him?" demanded Wilbur, suddenly.
"Not half as much as the others," returned Sharon in indignant triumph. "If they'd just set tight like they promised and let me do the little I done——"
"You were going to sit tight, too, weren't you?"
"Well, of course, that was different. Of course I was willing to shell out a few dollars now and then if he was going to be up against it for a square meal. After all, he was Whipple by name. Of course he ain't got Whipple stuff in him. That young man's talk always did have kind of a nutty flavour. You come right down to it, he ain't a Whipple in hide nor hair. Why, say, he ain't even two and seventy-five-hundredths per cent. Whipple!"
Sharon had cunningly gone away from his own failure to sit tight. He was proving flexible-minded here, as on the links.
They were silent, looking out over the spread of Home Farm. The red house still shimmered in the heat waves. The tall trees about it hung motionless. The click of the reaper in the south forty sounded like a distant locust.
"Put the fear of God into him," said Sharon at last. "Let him know them checks have gosh all truly stopped."
"Yes, sir," said Wilbur.
"Now drive on and we'll look the house over. The last tenant let it run down. But I'll fix it right for you. Why, like as not you'll be having a missis and young ones of your own there some day."
"I might; you can't tell."