“It seemed too bad to have her wastin her time on sich as it was, an I didn’t want folks to look at her picter, when it was done, an say how shifless I was nohow. So I got the boys out by the break o’ day, an we put in some good solid work on that mill agin the time she got thar. We tore down all them pesky vines an burned them up, an cut away the bushes so as to make a good airy clearin all raound. Then we turned to an giv the hull outside a fustclass coat of whitewash, from ruff to suller, an made it look fine.
“We hadn’t more’n finished when she come along with all her fixins, ready to do it up in iles; but when I went out to show her what we’d done she didn’t seem a mite grateful. She jest looked disappointed an miserable an said ‘Oh, Deacon, how could ye?’
“Then she went off, like she felt real bad, an awhile arterwards I see her settin on the big rock in my hill pasture, wastin all her paints on one of them common pink an white apple-trees, such as you might see most any day bout this time o’ year. Oh, yes, she’s a artiss, an cranky like they all is.”
In the meantime Colonel Dale was quietly, but actively, making preparations to sink a well, in search of the wealth of oil that he hoped lay hidden beneath the Dustin farm. On the very first morning after they reached there he and Miss Hatty and Arthur visited the place in the back wood-lot where Mr. Dustin and his son had discovered the tiny gas jet issuing from the rocks. Arthur readily found it again, and again the application of a lighted match gave proof that it was genuine gas and would burn.
Then the Colonel said he would leave the location of the well to his little partner, and asked him to point out the place where he wished the derrick to stand.
The boy walked hesitatingly around the gas jet for a minute, and then, returning to where the others stood, said:
“Don’t you think, grandpapa, that Cousin Hatty ’d better be the one to say where it shall stand? You see I know so much about oil, and you have got so wise lately, that I am afraid we are not quite such ‘chumps’ as we ought to be; but Cousin Hatty is a real genuine, and doesn’t know anything at all. About oil, I mean!” he added quickly, blushing furiously. “Of course she knows everything else, and that’s what makes her the very best kind of a ‘chump.’”
“Something like—
“‘The pork-pie man’s beautiful daughter
Who rarely knew what she had orter;