"Twenty dollars," she counted. "For how long?"
"All summer."
"Ten weeks! Two dollars a week for two of you! Board on the desert is cheap at a dollar a day. You can write your mother to that effect; and in the meantime, perhaps you better put up at the hotel——"
"Oh, she said if anyone made a fuss, she'd pay more," Billiard hastily explained, for somehow the hotel idea did not appeal to him.
"Well, you tell her a dollar a day for each of you is the regular rate. And now you will have just about time to get that wood before supper is ready."
Billiard glanced questioningly up into the clear, olive face above him, as if he could not believe his ears.
"The pile is close to the door," she continued, paying no attention to the amazement in his face: "and the woodbox is on the screened porch."
Billiard hesitated, opened his lips as if to speak, closed them again, and inwardly raging, but outwardly meek, marched out of the door to the woodpile.