“They came this morning,” she said excitedly, “and I haven’t opened them yet. I thought you’d all like to be here when I did, you know. Here’s two from New York and one from Cleveland, Ohio, and--and they all feel as though they had something in them!”
“You do it,” said Harry, handing the letters to Dick. There was a moment of silent suspense while Dick carefully slit the first envelop with his knife. Out came a letter and--a check!
“How much?” cried the others in chorus. Dick looked at it, scowled and glanced at the few lines in the letter. Then:
There was a moment of disappointment, broken by Chub.
“Mail it back to him,” he said disgustedly.
“Try the next one,” murmured Harry. Dick did so. Again a check came into sight.
“That’s better,” said Roy. “Try the next. Let’s know the worst.”
Dick opened the third letter, unfolded the sheet of paper within and looked on all sides of it. There was no check.
“Rotten!” growled Chub. “What’s the beast say?”
“It’s all right!” cried Dick who had been reading the letter. “He promises five hundred whenever we get ready to use the money!”
“That’s the stuff!” said Roy. “He’s all right, he is! What’s his beautiful name?”
“Well,” said Roy, when the laughter had subsided, “he may not be much on name, but he’s all right on promises.”
“You don’t think the promise is--is fishy?” asked Harry, and for a moment didn’t know why the others laughed. “But I didn’t mean to make a pun,” she declared earnestly.
“Oh, Harry,” teased Roy, “I saw you thinking that up whole minutes ago! And such a weak pun, too!”
“I didn’t! I didn’t!” cried Harry, stamping her foot, between smiling and frowning. Methuselah, who had so far been perched comfortably on her shoulder and behaving himself thoroughly, resented being jarred and so climbed down to the lid of the grain chest and from there to the barn floor, sidling off into the semi-darkness behind the harness-room with many cunning chuckles.
“Oh, he will pay all right,” said Dick. “He’s a railroad man according to his letter-head, and railroad men are all rich, you know.”
“Are they?” asked Chub. “Let’s start a railroad instead of a dormitory, then. What do you say?”
“Let’s see how much we’ve got subscribed,” suggested Roy. “Five hundred and fifty and five and forty--”