"Do you think it is just right, Lloyd?" she asked, stirring the unsavory concoction slowly with a wooden paddle. "Isn't it just a greed for gold, like gambling?"
Lloyd put both elbows on the top of the ash hopper and looked at her laughingly. He had on a straw hat lined with green calico, and his trousers were of blue jeans, held up by "galluses" of the same; but he was a handsome fellow, with sound white teeth and thick curling locks.
"I don't know as a greed for gold is any worse than a greed for corn," he said, trying to curb his voice into seriousness.
"But corn is useful—it is food—and, besides, you work for it." Marg'et Ann pushed her sunbonnet back and looked at him anxiously.
"Well, I've planted a good deal more corn than I expect to eat this year, and I was calculating to sell some of it for gold,—you wouldn't think that was wrong, would you, Marg'et Ann?"
"No, of course not; but some one will eat it,—it's useful," maintained the girl earnestly.
"I haven't found anything more useful than money yet," persisted the young man good-naturedly; "but if I come home from California with two or three bags full of gold, I'll buy up a township and raise corn by the wholesale,—that'll make it all right, won't it?"
Marg'et Ann laughed in spite of herself.
"You're such a case, Lloyd," she said, not without a note of admiration in her reproof.
When it came to the parting there was little said. Marg'et Ann hushed her lover's assurances with her own, given amid blinding tears.