"Ah-ha," he always greeted. "So you've come to. Thought something would show up in that 'bargain.'"
"Please don't, father," admonished Agnes, frowningly.
"I'll look after everything while you are down, old man," said Stewart. "I'll start the horses you've been working this afternoon. Aggie has explained everything. I understand."
"I'm so thankful," he said, then closing his eyes, and a few minutes later had fallen asleep.
CHAPTER XV
OH, MY JEAN!
WHEN JACK STEWART left Indiana, and left owing the two hundred dollars which was secured by a chattel mortgage on his horses, he failed to do something he now had cause to regret. The man to whom he owed this money agreed to give him one year in which to pay it, but didn't renew the mortgage. He was a close friend of Jack's, and there had been no worry. But the man died; his affairs fell into the hands of an administrator, whose duties were to clean up, to realize on all due and past due matter. And because the note of Jack Stewart's was due and past due, the extension being simply a verbal one, the administrator wrote Jack demanding that he take up his note at once.
We know the circumstances of Jack Stewart; that because Jean Baptiste had hired his son Bill, and now was boarding with them, he was able to get along; but Jack Stewart had nothing with which to pay $200 notes.... So while Jean Baptiste was recovering from his illness, Jack Stewart had cause to be very much worried.
Possessed, however, with a confidence, Jack took the matter up with the banker in the town where he received his mail. Now a common saying in a new country is: "I'm going to borrow five dollars and start a bank...." Inferring that while there is, as a whole, an abundance of banks in a new country, they do not always have the wherewithal to loan. What they have is usually retained for the accommodation of their regular patrons, and they were unable to accommodate Jack, even had they wished to do so.