“I never knew anybody who didn’t,” Thaine agreed.
“So many things, I needn’t name them all, bad crops, bad faith on the part of others, bad luck and bad judgment and bad health, for all his size, have helped till he is ready to go hopeless, and Uncle Jim’s only fifty-one. It’s no time to quit till you’re eighty in such a good old state as Kansas,” Leigh asserted. “Only, big as he is, he’s not a real strong man, and crumples down where small nervy men stand up.”
“Well, lady landlord, how can I advise you? You are past advising. You have already bought,” Thaine said. 248
“You can tell me how to pay for the ranch,” Leigh declared calmly. “I bought of Darley Champers for sixteen hundred dollars. I paid two hundred down just now. I’ve been saving it two years; since I left the high school at Careyville. Butter and eggs and chickens and some other things.” She hesitated, and a dainty pink tint swept her cheek.
Why should a girl be so deliciously fair with the bloom of summer on her cheeks and with little ringlets curling in baby-gold hair about her temples and at her neck, and with such red lips sweet to kiss, and then put about herself a faint invisible something that should make the young man beside her blush that he would even think of being so rude as to try to kiss her.
“And you paid how much?” Thaine asked gravely.
“Two hundred dollars. I want to borrow fourteen hundred more and get it clear away from Darley Champers. I’m sure with a ranch again, Uncle Jim will be able to win out,” Leigh insisted.
“What’s on it now?” Thaine asked.
“Just weeds and a million sunflowers. Enough to send Prince Quippi such a message he’d have to write back a real love letter to me,” Leigh replied.
“Leighlie, you can’t do it. You might pay interest maybe, year in and year out, the gnawing, wearing interest. That’s all you’d do even with your hens and butter. Don’t undertake the burden.”