Jamie opened his wide black eyes.
"Hoot! Feyther could ha' bought Jim Tarr's whole farm for that, three year ago," said he; and, with one more contemptuous stare at the piano, he left the room, and was presently seen in the stable-yard, shouldering from his path a wagon laden with coals.
Soon after, Miselle and her friends gladly bade farewell to Oil City, leaving the scornful lady seated at the piano executing the charming melody of "We're a band of brothers from the old Granite State."
Having entered the city by the hill-road, it was proposed to return along the Creek, although, as Jamie candidly stated, the road "might, like enough, be a thought worser than the other."
And it was.
Before the oil fever swept through this region, a man might have travelled from the mouth of the Creek to its head-waters, and seen no more buildings than he could have numbered on his ten fingers. Now the line of derricks, shanties, engine-houses, and oil-tanks is continuous through the whole distance; and thousands of men may be seen to-day accumulating millions of dollars where three years ago the squirrel and his wife, hoarding their winter stores, were the only creatures that took thought for the morrow.
After its incongruous mixture of society, the social peculiarity of Oil Creek is a total disregard of truth.
A mechanic, a tradesman, or a boatman makes the most solemn promise of service at a certain time. Terms are settled, a definite hour appointed for the fulfilment of the contract; the man departs, and is seen no more. His employer is neither disappointed nor angry; he expects nothing else.
A cart laden with country produce enters the settlement from the farms behind it. Every housewife drops her broom, and rushes out to waylay the huckster, and induce him to sell her the provisions already engaged to her neighbor. Happy she, if stout enough of arm to convey her booty home with her; for if she trust the vendor to leave it at her house, even after paying him his price, she may bid good-bye to the green delights, as eagerly craved here as on a long sea-voyage.
This "peculiar institution" is all very well, doubtless, for those who understand it, but is somewhat inconvenient to a stranger, as Miselle discovered during the three days she was trying to leave Tarr Farm.