"You may be right," he said, "but in this matter I venture to think that you and I can make a bargain without any outside help."
"You can, at any rate, state your proposition, Mr. Wolverton."
"Have you any idea as to the amount of your wheat crop?"
"Robert tells me there will be not far from fourteen hundred bushels."
Wolverton's eyes showed his pleasure. If he made the bargain proposed, this would bring him an excellent profit. "Very good!" he said. "It will be a great help to you."
"Yes; I feel that we are fortunate, especially when I consider that the ranch has been carried on by a boy of sixteen."
"Well, Mrs. Burton, I am a man of few words. I will give you a dollar and a half a bushel for your wheat, and this will give you, on the basis of fourteen hundred bushels, twenty-one hundred dollars. You are a very fortunate woman."
"But, Mr. Wolverton, Robert tells me he expects to get at least two dollars a bushel."
It must be remembered that grain was then selling at "war prices."
"I don't know what the boy can be thinking of," said Wolverton, contemptuously. "Two dollars a bushel! Why don't he say five dollars at once?"