“Is the squire in?” he asked.
“Yes,” was the reply; and the girl indicated the door of the “office.”
Harry knocked.
“Come in,” said the squire, in his usual grating voice.
Harry did go in.
Squire Turner was seated at his desk. He had a paper before him, which Harry rightly guessed was the fire insurance policy. The squire had been examining it with considerable complacency. Two thousand dollars was a large sum even to him, and certainly a very handsome consideration for the old Jackson farm-house, which with the land around it he had got, by the foreclosure of a mortgage, at a decided bargain. How the company had ever been induced to grant so large a sum on such a house, even in its better days, was a wonder; but insurance companies sometimes make mistakes as well as private individuals, and this appeared to be one of them.
“Very well, you can state your business.”
For two thousand dollars, or a little more, the squire had been thinking he could build a nice modern house, which would make the farm salable at a considerably higher figure than before. This was a very pleasant prospect, of course, and the harsh lines in the squire’s face were smoothed out to a certain extent as he thought of it.