Page:Train - Tutt and Mr Tutt (Scribner, 1922).djvu/222

 she answered. "I've no complaint to make of Mr. Badger. He's a very handsome polite gentleman. And I don't feel altogether right about coming to you and saying anything that might be taken against him—but lately I've heard so many things"

"Don't worry about Badger!" growled Mr. Tutt. "How did you come to invest in his oil stock?"

"I was there when he got the telegram telling how they had found oil on the property; it came one night at dinner. He was tickled to death. The stock had been selling at three cents a share, and, of course, after the oil was discovered he said it would go right up to ten dollars. But he was real nice about it—he said anybody who had been living there in the house could share his good fortune with him, come in on the ground floor, and have it just the same for three cents. A week later there came a photograph of the gusher and almost all of us decided to buy stock."

At this point in the narrative Mr. Tutt kicked the coal hod violently and uttered a smothered ejaculation.

"Of course I didn't have any ready money," explained Mrs. Effingham, "but I had the bonds—they only paid two per cent and the oil stock was going to pay twenty—and so I took them down to