But Spurrier had not in his letters to Harrison mentioned his marriage, and to Vivien he had not written at all. He thought they would hardly understand, and he preferred to make his announcement when he stood face to face with them, relying on the force of his own personality to challenge any criticism and proclaim his own independence of action. Just now there was no virtue in needlessly antagonizing his chief.
Among the guests who came to that housewarming was one chance visitor who was not expected. He came because the people under whose roof he was being sheltered, had “fetched him along,” and he was Wharton, the man whose purpose hereabouts had set gossip winging aforetime.
It seemed to some of the local visitors that despite his entire courtesy, Spurrier did not evince any profound liking for this other “furriner,” and since they had come to accept their host as a trustworthy oracle, they took the tip and were prepared to dislike Wharton, too.
That evening, while blind Joe Givins fiddled, and dancers “ran their sets” on the smooth, new floor, a group of men gathered on the porch outside and smoked. Among them for a time were both Spurrier and Wharton.
The latter raised something of a laugh when he confidently predicted that the oil prosperity, for all its former collapse and present paralysis, was not permanently dead.
“The world needs oil and there’s oil here,” he declared with unctuous conviction. “Men who are willing to gamble on that proposition will win out in the end.”
“Stranger,” responded Uncle Jimmy Litchfield, taking his pipestem from between his teeth and spitting contemptuously at the earth, “ye sees, settin’ right hyar before ye a man that ’lowed he was a millionaire one time, ’count of this hyar same oil ye’re discoursin’ so hopeful about. Thet man’s me. I’d been dirt-pore all my days, oftentimes hurtin’ fer ther plum’ needcessities of life. I’m mighty nigh thet pore still.”
“Did you strike oil in the boom days?” demanded Wharton as he bent eagerly forward.
“I owned me a farm, them days, on t’other side ther mounting,” went on the narrator, “an’ them oil men came along an’ wanted ter buy ther rights offen me.”