“They’re about at the end of their rope,” he went on. “The fiddler will have to be paid, that’s all.”
“That’s all!” she echoed indignantly. “Isn’t it enough? The money’s nothin’ and the food’s nothin’,” she went on excitedly. “I have plenty to keep both families alive and free from the necessity of doing a stroke the rest of their lives. It isn’t that, man. The Wells family have been used to living on a big scale. They have been surrounded by negroes who fetch and carry for them, and they have been the ‘big family’ in this part of the country for a century or more. They could never come down. Don’t you see it, man? It would kill them. They could never pig it along the way you and I could do. Don’t sit there and grin at me, you blitherin’ fool! What I want to know is what we’re goin’ to do about it?”
He puffed away deliberately and watched her animated face as if he enjoyed her dramatics. Then he said:
“We’re going to pay off the debts, liquidate the mortgage and set the Wells family on its feet—bail ’em out, in short.”
“We are, are we?” she tossed her head. “And with what?”
“Money.”
“Whose money? I’ve got none; at least none that would count.”
“My money.”
“Talk sense, man,” she stood up and sat down nervously. “It’ll take thousands to——”
“Easily that,” he figured. “I’m counting on about sixty thousand. The place is mortgaged for forty-two thousand dollars, thirty thousand on a first mortgage and twelve thousand on a second. She has notes out amounting to about eight thousand more. That’s fifty thousand. She owes the negroes about ten thousand more——”