“Sometimes we’d find fifty cents’ worth; sometimes we wouldn’t find any.”
“But when you did find any, Mrs. Davidson, what did you do with it?”
“We took a fancy to hoarding it in an old mustard-box, Molly.”
“I wonder, Almeda, how many times we carried the battered thing to that miserable little store at the cross-roads?” interrupted Captain Bradstreet.
“We, Alec? It was you that carried the box. You used to tell me that I wasn’t big enough to be trusted with it,” retorted Mrs. Davidson playfully. “Nobody knows how I’ve grieved over that.”
“I suspect I was rather lordly about keeping possession of the gold-dust, Almeda; but you can’t say that I didn’t give you your half of the candy it bought.”
“No; you gave me my full share, Alec. That was not a great deal, though. Candy, like everything else, was very dear in those days.”
“And I’m inclined to believe that that wretched storekeeper cheated us, Almeda,” said Captain Bradstreet, removing a green leaf that had fallen into his coffee-cup. “But you haven’t told the children of the watch and the sluices.”
“Don’t hurry me, Alec; I’m coming to the sluices. These were long wooden troughs, higher at one end than at the other. The miners used to throw earth into them, and then flood them. The water would wash away the earth, and leave the gold in the bottom of the sluices.”
“It wouldn’t have stayed there long if I had been around,” commented Kirke, sugaring his strawberries.