"Mercy me! I thought you was run over," Ma Briskow exclaimed.
"I feel like I was," the nester declared, with a grin. "Say! Mister
Gray sold the Evans lease an'—we got more money than ever."
"Then mebbe you can afford a new suit," Allie told him. "You look like sin."
Her father nodded, but his mind was full of the incidents of that afternoon and he began at once to recount them. He told the story badly, but in a language that the women understood. He had not gone far, however, when the girl interrupted him to exclaim:
"Wait! Why, Pa! You mean to say Mister Gray 'ain't got no money?"
"He had less 'n a hundred dollars. An' him livin' here like a king with everybody bowin' an' scrapin'!"
Ignoring the effect upon Allie of this intelligence, he continued his recital. "All I done was set around while him an' them bank people talked it over," he said, finally. "Then they got their lawyer in an' he examined the title papers. Seemed like he'd never git through, but he did, an' they signed some things an' we come out, an' Mister Gray told me I'd made forty-eight thousand dollars."
"Goodness me!" Ma Briskow's eyes widened. "Why, that Evans place ain't wuth the taxes."
"It's more 'n likely wuth a million. But think! Him tellin' me I'd made forty-eight thousand dollars! It give me a jolt, an' I says I didn't make it. I told him I'd fell down an' turned the hull thing over to him. 'It's you that's made forty-eight thousand,' I says."
"What?" Allie inquired, sharply. Then when her father had repeated himself, she asked with even greater intensity: "Wha'd he say to that? He didn't take it, did he?"