"Like enough. I went to see her last week, but I could not give her any comfort. She couldn't have a worse thing happen than for Peter to come home."
"Well, Captain John, when you come to have babies of your own, you'll find mothers are a curious kind of animal."
"Mothers!" laughed John. "I hope there won't be more than one. Now, I really must go."
"Oh, just one more real bit of news. Lawyer Swallow's wife was here yesterday with another man to settle up her husband's business."
"Is he dead?"
"They say so, but you can't believe everything you hear. Now, don't hurry. What most killed Swallow was just this: He hated Pole like poison, and when he got a five hundred dollar mortgage-grip on Pole's pasture meadow, he kept that butcher-man real uneasy. When you were all away, Swallow began to squeeze—what those lawyers call 'foreclose.' It's just some lawyer word for robbery."
"It's pretty bad, Mrs. Crocker, but two people are waiting for you and this isn't exactly Government business."
"Got to hear the end, Captain."
"I suppose so—what next?" Dixy wondered why the spur touched him even lightly.
"Pole, he told Mrs. Penhallow all about it, and she wasn't as glad to help her meat-man as she was to bother Swallow, so she took over the mortgage. When the Squire first came home from Washington and wasn't like he was later, she told him, of course. Now everybody knows Pole's ways, and so the Squire he says to me—he was awful amused—'Mrs. Crocker, I asked Mrs. Penhallow how Pole was going to pay her.' She said she did put that at Pole, and he said it wouldn't take long to eat up that debt at Grey Pine. He wouldn't have dared to speak like that to your aunt if she hadn't got to be so meek-like, what with war and bother." By this time Dixy was with reason displeased and so restless that Mrs. Crocker let the reins drop, but as John Penhallow rode away she cried, "The price of meats at Grey Pine has been going up ever since, until Miss Leila—" The rest was lost to the Captain. He rode away laughing as he reflected on what share of Pole's debt he was to devour.