“‘Didn’t know they had changed tenants,’ said he. ‘I’ve called for the rent.’
“Do you know, Phil, I fawncied the silly owl had gone balmy, but he insisted that he had to collect thirty dollars a month rent.
“Of course, I showed the fellow my receipt for the place, proving I was the owner of it. But he just looked at it and said:––
“‘Say!––who are you making a kid of? This might be all right for a bunch of groceries, or electric light, or a ton of coal, but it isn’t all right for a rawnch.’
“‘Why!––what’s the matter with it?’ I asked. ‘Doesn’t it say, Received from Percival DeRue Hannington the sum of five thousand dollars for one ranch of twenty acres, with house and barns, situated ten miles from the city of Vernock and called Douthem’s Ranch?’
“‘Sure it does,’ said the chap. And he was devilish rude about it too.”
By this time, Phil had all he could do to keep from shouting with merriment. He did not dare to look at DeRue Hannington, so he kept religiously to his food.
“Well,––he told me the rawnch belonged to some other people; that Douthem only rented it, and that one had to have a deed and register it when one bought property. The blooming upshot was I had to pay the collecting fellow his thirty dollars and get out. So I landed back here to-day.
“I daresay, Phil, a man has to pay for his experience, but you know it looks as if a fellow had to do so much paying that when he does finish up by really owning something, 109 he will have paid such a beastly lot for it that he’ll never be able to make it up again.”
Phil showed impatience.