“You see,” said Alan to the lawyer, “mother and I think father has already more of this sort of property than he can carry, and—”
“I wish you and yore mother'd let my business alone,” broke in Bishop, firing up again. “Trabue heer knows I've been worryin' 'im fer the last two months to get the property in salable shape. Do you reckon after he gets it that away I want to listen to yore two tongues a-waggin' in open opposition to it?”
Trabue rubbed his hands together. “It really don't make a bit of difference to me, Alan, one way or the other,” he said, pacifically. “I'm only acting as attorney for the Tompkins estate, and get my fee whether there's a transfer or not. That's where I stand in the matter.”
“But it's not whar I stand in it, Mr. Trabue,” said a firm voice in the doorway. It was Mrs. Bishop, her blue eyes flashing, her face pale and rigid. “I think I've got a right—and a big one—to have a say-so in this kind of a trade. A woman 'at 's stayed by a man's side fer thirty odd yeer an' raked an' scraped to he'p save a little handful o' property fer her two children has got a right to raise a rumpus when her husband goes crooked like Alfred has an' starts in to bankrupt 'em all jest fer a blind notion o' his'n.”
“Oh, thar you are!” said Bishop, lifting his eyes from the paper and glaring at her over his glasses. “I knowed I'd have to have a knock-down-an'-drag-out fight with you 'fore I signed my name, so sail in an' git it over. Trabue's got to ride back to town.”
“But whar in the name o' common-sense is the money to come from?” the woman hurled at her husband, as she rested one of her bony hands on the edge of the table and glared at him. “As I understand it, thar's about five thousand acres in this piece alone, an' yo're a-payin' a dollar a acre. Whar's it a-comin' from, I'd like to know? Whar's it to come from?”
Bishop sniffed and ran a steady hand over his short, gray hair. “You see how little she knows o' my business,” he said to the lawyer. “Heer she's raisin' the devil an' Tom Walker about the trade an' she don't so much as know whar the money's to come from.”
“How was I to know?” retorted the woman, “when you've been tellin' me fer the last six months that thar wasn't enough in the bank to give the house a coat o' fresh paint an' patch the barn roof.”
“You knowed I had five thousand dollars wuth o' stock in the Shoal River Cotton Mills, didn't you?” asked Bishop, defiantly, and yet with the manner of a man throwing a missile which he hoped would fall lightly.
“Yes, I knowed that, but—” The woman's eyes were two small fires burning hungrily for information beyond their reach.