Mr. Featherbrain shoved up his window and thrust out his head. I opened our kitchen window so that I could hear what he was going to say.
"I betcher durned old water wouldn't turn on!" he cackled. "Durned old Indians are allus turnin' it off, ain't they? Yuh oughta put the Indian sign on 'em, that'd fix 'em!" He chortled at his own wit.
I was quivering with reaction, cold, and indignation. I realized that the "Indian" who had turned off our water tonight had been a tall, thin black-haired one, with a white stubble sprouting over a pink chin. But I couldn't think of an appropriate, biting enough retort.
I didn't know exactly what I was going to say, but I leaned forward, waiting for the enraged words to come.
They did. "I oughta bust evvy bone in yer head!" I snarled.
One day the grapevine which twined around the various motels in town, linking them together, vibrated with the information that Mr. and Mrs. Garner had sold the Peacock. And for one hundred thousand dollars!
"One hundred thousand. A tenth of a million," we said, rolling the words around on our tongues and tasting them critically.
They tasted wonderful to Grant. "A hundred thousand," he mused. "Do you suppose, if we advertised once and really tried, we could get anything like that for this place?"
"Well, this place is worth more than the Peacock," I said cautiously. "But we don't want to sell, do we?"
"No--o--o, I guess not," he said; but the thoughtful expression didn't fully leave his eyes for several weeks.