“‘I’ve lost my penny,’ says the kid.
“‘Never mind! never mind!’ says the old gentleman, reaching into his pocket. ‘Here is a penny,’ and he hands her one. The kid looks up at him and sees right through the game. Says she:
“‘Why! you horrid man! you had it all the time, didn’t you?’ And the next time,” chuckled Tavia, “he will go right along about his business and not try to play Santa Claus to young ladies to whom he has not been introduced.”
Dorothy laughed at her chum’s little story, and said: “I guess most appearances are deceitful. At least, Aunt Winnie says you mustn’t form an opinion upon mere looks—so that gives me a chance to point a moral, and adorn a tale.”
“There was Pat, who was a coal heaver, coming home and finding that the children had been using his Ancient Order of Hibernian regalia-hat to bring home coals in. ‘Mary Ann! Mary Ann! Phy do youse let thim kids do that?’ holding up the maltreated high hat. ‘I’ve told youse before—I don’t like it!’
“‘Shure, Pat,’ says she, ‘phat harm does it be doin’? A little more coaldust won’t hurt yez.’
“‘That may be thrue, woman,’ says Pat, ‘but yez don’t see the point. When I wear the hat out, shure, an’ take it off, it laves a black mar-r-k around me forehead. An’ wot’s th’ consekences?’ demands Pat, warmly. ‘Shure it gits me accused of washin’ me face with me hat on!’”
Tavia ran out of the room. Both girls were well acquainted with the house now. It had most modern improvements and Colonel Hardin, although he was a man of no family, had entertained largely and believed in having all the comforts attainable. A huge windmill pumped water for the house and stables, for this was not the desert, and a vein of water could be tapped something like a hundred and fifty feet below the surface.
Hank Ledger had told the girls when they inquired that this vein of water was supposed to be a branch of Lost River, which plunged into the earth so many miles away in the low hills to the west.
“Tell yuh what!” croaked the foreman, who seemed to be a bird of ill-omen, “ef that thar river is ever turned out onto the desert, as I tol’ the old Kern” (Colonel) “when he was alive, ye air goin’ tuh shut off yuh own water supply right yere. Now! yuh hear me shoutin’!”