Page:Icebound.pdf/60

48

We ’d have to be smarter ’n I see any signs of; she ’s through lendin’.

How do you know?

I tried it myself.

What do you want money for. Ain’t she takin’ you in to live with her?

I don’t call myself beholden for that. She had to have some one, with Ben here, and her unmarried, and next to no relation to him.

Everybody ’s callin’ you the chaperon! (She laughs) Not but what they ought to be one with him around; he ’s awful good lookin’.

You keep away from him. He ’s no blood kin of yours, and he ’s a bad man, if he is a Jordan. Always makes up to everything he sees in petticoats, and always did.

Thanks for the compliment, but I ’m not looking for any jailbirds.

It will be awful, Ben in State’s Prison,—and I guess he ’ll have to go, soon as he stands his trial.

He got drunk and had a fight with the two Kimbal boys, and they licked him, and that night he burned down their barn; everybody knows it.