“More than ever. In the matter of love, Donna, absence really makes the heart—”
“How much?” She lifted her face toward him adoringly.
“Ten hundred thousand million dollars' worth” he declared, and they both laughed.
“I don't know whether you're a man or just a big boy” Donna told him. She sighed. “But then I don't know anything to-day, except that if I am ever happier than I am this minute I shall die. I shall not be able to stand it. But, dearie! You haven't told me a word about Donnaville!”
So Bob related to her a minute history of himself from the moment he had left her until he had leaned over her in the observation car. He described, with inimitable wit and enjoyment, his experience in the land office, and together they examined the fifty receipts.
“I'm sorry you had to lock Mr. Carey in the room and gag him and tie him up” said Donna regretfully. “Maybe he'll have you arrested!”
“I'm sorry, too, dear. But then it was the only thing I could do and I had to keep him quiet. Oh, I don't care” he added defiantly. “I'd muss up an old crook like Carey every hour for your sake. But he won't have me arrested. That would be too dangerous for him.”
“Then you can get the land right away?” she queried.
He shook his head. “The cards haven't even been dealt, sweetheart. My applications will almost certainly be held up six months in the state land office before they are approved by the surveyor-general and forwarded to the Commissioner of the General Land Office at Washington to be passed to patent by the United States. And I shall be very greatly surprised if Carey hasn't a friend in Washington who will see that the granting of the patents is delayed for several years. Then, when the matter cannot be delayed any longer, Carey will induce one of his dummies to protest the applications, alleging that they are part of a gigantic land fraud scheme, and a few more years will go by while this protest is being investigated.”
“But you'll win in the long run, will you not?”