But Mr. Gwynne would not look at his wife. “Let me see, Mr. Sleighter, your farm, you say, with buildings, is worth about six thousand to sixty-five hundred. Mine is worth from fifty-five hundred to six thousand. I will take your offer and pay the difference.”
“Oh, come off your perch,” said Mr. Sleighter. “You're doin' the highfalutin' Vere de Vere act now. Listen to me. The deal is as level as I can figger it. Your farm and store with the machine business suit me all right. I feel I can place my boy right here for a while anyway. My farm, I believe, would suit you better than anythin' else you can get. There's my offer. Take it or leave it.”
“I think we will take it, Mr. Sleighter,” said Mrs. Gwynne. “Michael dear, I feel Mr. Sleighter is right, and besides I know he is doing us a great kindness.”
“Kindness, ma'am, not at all. Business is business, and that's all there is to it. Well, I'll be goin'. Think it over, get the papers fixed up by to-morrow. No, don't thank me. Good-bye.”
Mrs. Gwynne followed him to the door, her face flushed, her eyes aglow, a smile hovering uncertainly about her lips. “Mr. Sleighter,” she said, “the Lord sent you to us because He knew we were in need of guiding.”
“Ho, ho!” laughed Mr. Sleighter. “Like that Samaritan chap in the reading, eh? I guess you had got among thieves all right, more of 'em perhaps than you recognised too.”
“He sent you to us,” repeated Mrs. Gwynne, offering him her hand.
“Well, I donno but that He steered me to you. But all the same I guess the advantage is to me all right.” Mr. Sleighter looked hard down the street, then turned and faced her squarely. “I want to say that it's done me a pile of good to have seen you, ma'am. It's made things look different.”
“You are a good man, Mr. Sleighter,” she said, looking at him with misty eyes.
“A good man!” Mr. Sleighter was seized with a cough. “A good man! Good Lord, ma'am! nobody never found it out but you—durn that cough anyway.” And still troubled by his cough, Mr. Sleighter hurried down the path to the gate and out on to the road.