At this interesting moment the car slowly came to a standstill at a wooden platform, and Joe thrust open the door and shouted: “Here you are! Bunkerville!”
Dorothy Slocum held out her hand shyly to John Steele as she bade him “Good-bye.” She thanked him once more for allowing her to ride on the special train, and added: “If you ever come to Bunkerville again, I hope you will not forget me.”
“Forget you!” cried the enthusiastic young man. “I think you entirely underrate the attractions of Bunkerville. It seems to me a lovely village. But I shall visit it in the near future—not because of itself, but for the reason that a certain Miss Dorothy lives here.”
To this complimentary speech Miss Slocum made no reply, but she laughed and blushed in a manner very becoming to her, and somehow managed to leave an impression on Mr. Steele’s mind that she was far from being displeased at the words he had uttered.
When she was gone, the traveller asked Joe where the office of Mr. Hazlett, the lawyer, was situated, and being directed, he was speedily in the presence of the chief legal functionary that Bunkerville possessed. Steele had a considerable amount of money lent upon Bunkerville business property, and his lawyer had written him that, as times were backward, there arose some difficulty in persuading the debtors to meet the requirements of the mortgages. If the mortgages were foreclosed and the property sold, Hazlett did not think it would produce the money that had been borrowed upon it, and so Steele had informed him that he would drop off at Bunkerville on his way west and consult with him.
The lawyer had been looking for him on the regular train, and so was not at the station to meet him. If Hazlett had expected a visit from a hard old skinflint, bent on clutching his pound of financial flesh, he must have been somewhat surprised to greet a smiling young fellow who seemed to be thinking of anything but the property in question.
“We will just walk down the street,” said the lawyer, “and I’ll show you the buildings.”
“All right,” assented Steele, “if it doesn’t take too long; for I must catch the three o’clock local at Slocum Junction.”
During their walk together Steele paid but the scantiest interest to the edifices pointed out to him, and the lawyer soon found he was not even listening to the particulars he recited so circumstantially.
“Do you know anything about the Farmers’ Railway?” was the question Steele shot at him in the midst of a score of reasons why it was better not to foreclose at the present moment.