"My poor husband would have left me a comfortable fortune in my own right if it had not been for the meddlesomeness of some one who had no business to interfere.
"Mr. Barnett was a mine owner—and a most excellent business man. He had large interests in Colorado. One mine he was going to sell. An old gentleman and his daughter were just ready to buy it. The papers were all drawn, and they were to pay over their money that evening. But some horrid young man, a wandering fiddler or something, got to meddling and persuaded them not to trade.
"It was an awful loss to poor Tom. He was to have had $60,000 out of the sale—and he never got one cent out of that mine, not a cent."
"What did they do to that fellow that broke up the trade?" asked Reedy, puffing interestedly at his cigar.
"Oh, Mr. Barnett said they taught him a lesson that would keep him from spoiling any more trades." Mrs. Barnett laughed. And then accusingly: "Isn't it queer how mean some people are. Now just that little interference from that meddlesome stranger kept me from having a small fortune." A deep sigh. "And one can do so much good with money. Just think if I had that money how many poor people around here I could help. I hear there are families living across the line in little shacks—one or two rooms with dirt floors—and no bathroom. Isn't it awful? And women, too!"
Reedy twisted his chair about so he looked squarely at the widow. The sun had gone down, and the quick twilight was graying the row of palm trees that broke the skyline to the south. Jenkins was in a hurry to get away, but his visit was not quite rounded out.
"You must be very lonely," he said with a deep, sad voice—"since your husband died. Loneliness—ah loneliness! is the great ache of the human heart."
"Y-e-s. Oh, yes," Mrs. Barnett did not sound utterly desolate. "But of course, Mr. Barnett being away so much——" There was a significant pause. "He was an excellent man—a good business man, but you know. Well, some people are more congenial than others. We never had a cross word in our lives. But—well—our tastes were different, you know."
Reedy smoked and nodded in appreciative silence. The dusk came fast. Mrs. Barnett rustled her starched skirts and sighed.
"You know, Mr. Jenkins," she began on a totally different subject, "it has been such a pleasure to me to meet someone out here in this God-forsaken country with fine feelings—one who loves the higher things of life."