Page:Harold Titus--Timber.djvu/101

Rh buck's got something in him, Rowe. I thought he didn't. I tried to show him up—and by the Lord Harry, he's showin' me up! Showin' us up, Rowe."

He laughed again until he strangled for breath.

Rowe picked up his note book and sat down. "Do you want to go on?" he asked.

"With the will? The will, eh?—" Luke mumbled to himself and his blue eyes studied his secretary's face; then went out to that clump of pine. "No—no, Rowe. We won't go on with that, today. Telephone McLellan I've changed my mind about changin' my will—for a few days—a few days—He won't need to come out here this afternoon—Fifty dollars a week an' th' young buck fooled me! He laughed last, Rowe, he's laughed—

"Here, take a letter!"

The smile in his eyes was brighter.

"John Taylor, esquire, Pancake, Mich. Yours of recent date received and contents noted. Your mother is well. Yours truly.

"P.S. Bender is making his cracks that he beat you on your first shipment. Watch the market and don't be a bigger damn fool than you can help."

He grinned. Rowe looked up sullenly at this statement which had no foundation in fact.

"A line in time often gathers a lot of moss, Rowe," remarked Luke. "Now send his mother here—hurry!"

Curled on a chaise longue in her chintz-draped bedroom, Marcia Murray, too, read a letter from Pancake that forenoon, read with a mounting flush in her cheek and a light in her blue eyes that was not of good nature.

For a month, now, these letters had registered a