"Why, William Vibard!, what an awful thing to
say. What little money I had put by was saved
from years. What a thing to say about me and
Uncle Gordon."

"'Tain't no such thing you saved it; you held it
out on him, dollars at a time. You didn't have no
more right to it than I did."

Gordon's gaze centered keenly upon his niece's hot
face. She endeavored to sustain, refute, the accusation
successfully; but her valor wavered, broke.
She disappeared abruptly. He surveyed Vibard
without pleasure.

"You're a ramshackle contraption," he observed
crisply.

"I got as good a right to it as her," the other
repeated.

"A hundred and forty dollars," Gordon said bitterly;
"that's a small business. Well, where is it?
Have you got it?"

"No, I ain't," William exploded.

"Well--?"

"You can't never tell what might happen," the
young man observed enigmatically; "the bellowses
wear out dreadful quick, the keys work loose like,
and then they might stop making them. It's the best
one on the market."

"What scrabble's this? What did you do with
the money?"

[[316]]

p315 _ -chap- _ toc-1 _ p316w _ toc-2 _ +chap+ _ p317

v?