“What’s the matter with him, Doc?” said David to the physician. “He don’t seem to take no more int’rist than a foundered hoss. Can’t ye do nothin’ for him?”
“Not much use dosin’ him,” replied the doctor. “Pull out all right, may be, come warm weather. Big strong fellow, but this cussed influenzy, or grip, as they call it, sometimes hits them hardest.”
“Wa’al, warm weather ’s some way off,” remarked Mr. Harum, “an’ he coughs enough to tear his head off sometimes.”
The doctor nodded. “Ought to clear out somewhere,” he said. “Don’t like that cough myself.”
“What do you mean?” asked David.
“Ought to go ’way for a spell,” said the doctor; “quit working, and get a change of climate.”
“Have you told him so?” asked Mr. Harum.
“Yes,” replied the doctor; “said he couldn’t get away.”
“H’m’m!” said David thoughtfully, pinching his lower lip between his thumb and finger.
A day or two after the foregoing interview, John came in and laid an open letter in front of David, who was at his desk, and dropped languidly into a chair without speaking. Mr. Harum read the letter, smiled a little, and turning in his chair, took off his glasses and looked at the young man, who was staring abstractedly at the floor.
“I ben rather expectin’ you’d git somethin’ like this. What be you goin’ to do about it?”
“I don’t know,” replied John. “I don’t like the idea of leasing the property in any case, and certainly not on the terms they offer; but it is lying idle, and I’m paying taxes on it—”
“Wa’al, as I said, I ben expectin’ fer some time they’d be after ye in some shape. You got this this mornin’?”
“Yes.”
“I expect you’d sell the prop’ty if you got a good chance, wouldn’t ye?”
“With the utmost pleasure,” said John emphatically.
“Wa’al, I’ve got a notion they’ll buy it of ye,” said David, “if it’s handled right. I wouldn’t lease it if it was mine an’ I wanted to sell it, an’ yet, in the long run, you might git more out of it—an’ then agin you mightn’t,” he added.
“I don’t know anything about it,” said John, putting his handkerchief to his mouth in a fit of coughing. David looked at him with a frown.
“I ben aware fer some time that the’ was a movement on foot in your direction,” he said. “You know I told ye that I’d ben int’ristid in the oil bus’nis once on a time; an’ I hain’t never quite lost my int’rist, though it hain’t ben a very active one lately, an’ some fellers down there have kep’ me posted some. The’ ’s ben oil found near where you’re located, an’ the prospectin’ points your way. The hull thing has ben kep’ as close as possible, an’ the holes has ben plugged, but the oil is there somewhere. Now it’s like this: If you lease on shares an’ they strike the oil on your prop’ty, mebbe it’ll bring you more money; but they might strike, an’ agin they mightn’t. Sometimes you git a payin’ well an’ a dry hole only a few hunderd feet apart. Nevertheless they want to drill your prop’ty. I know who the parties is. These fellers that wrote this letter are simply actin’ for ’em.”
The speaker was interrupted by another fit of coughing, which left the sufferer very red in the face, and elicited from him the word which is always greeted with laughter in a theater.
“Say,” said David, after a moment, in which he looked anxiously at his companion, “I don’t like that cough o’ your’n.”
“I don’t thoroughly enjoy it myself,” was the rejoinder.
“Seems to be kind o’ growin’ on ye, don’t it?”
“I don’t know,” said John.
“I was talkin’ with Doc Hayes about ye,” said David, “an’ he allowed you’d ought to have your shoes off an’ run loose a spell.”
John smiled a little, but did not reply.
“Spoke to you about it, didn’t he?” continued David.
“Yes.”
“An’ you told him you couldn’t git away?”
“Yes.”
“Didn’t tell him you wouldn’t go if you could, did ye?”
“I only told him I couldn’t go,” said John.
David sat for a moment thoughtfully tapping the desk with his eyeglasses, and then said with his characteristic chuckle:
“I had a letter f’m Chet Timson yestidy.”
John looked up at him, failing to see the connection.
“Yes,” said David, “he’s out fer a job, an’ the way he writes I guess the dander’s putty well out of him. I reckon the’ hain’t ben nothin’ much but hay in his manger fer quite a spell,” remarked Mr. Harum.
“H’m!” said John, raising his brows, conscious of a humane but very faint interest in Mr. Timson’s affairs. Mr. Harum got out a cigar, and, lighting it, gave a puff or two, and continued with what struck the younger man as a perfectly irrelevant question. It really seemed to him as if his senior were making conversation.
“How’s Peleg doin’ these days?” was the query.
“Very well,” was the reply.
“C’n do most anythin’ ’t’s nec’sary, can’t he?”
A brief interruption followed upon the entrance of a man, who, after saying good morning, laid a note on
