“Well,” said Grogan plaintively, “if I were twenty years younger maybe it would be good exercise, but with my years, Miss, ’tis just plain exhausting.”
Here Harvey started the roan colt off again. “See you later,” he called back to Patience, “I’m stopping at your house.”
“So that’s Tom Welcome’s daughter, is it?” said Grogan as they got out of hearing.
“That’s one of them,” said Harvey, “but you ought to see the other.”
“The old man now,” went on Grogan, “is a good deal of a lush.”
“The girls can’t help what their father is,” retorted Harvey, bridling.
“I know, I know,” went on Mr. Grogan. “Such things happen in the best of families.”
“No, and you can’t blame Tom Welcome much, either,” went on Harvey. “He was drove to drink. He invented an electrical machine that would have made a fortune for him and some one stole it from him. It wasn’t the loss of the money that sent him to the devil, either. He’d spent a lifetime on his machine and just when he was getting it patented, some smart thief in Chicago takes it away from him. That’s what I call tough luck.”
“They’re hard up, you say?” pursued Grogan.
Harvey, unconscious that he had said nothing of the sort, admitted that the Welcomes were in financial straits. “Their mother has to take in washing,” he said, “and both the girls work. It’s too bad, for they ought to be getting an education.”