rich, of course, but he's tighter than the bark on a
tree. He's gone his limit and he won't stand for anything more. He can't
see that a farm like that is nothing but a factory and that you can't run
it for any profit that's worth while without the very best possible
equipment. He wanted us to pike along with scrub stock and the old tools
and buildings that were on the place and pay for improvements out of our
profits. Of course, the answer to that was that there wouldn't be any
profits. A grade cow these days simply can't earn her keep with the price
of feed and labor what it is. We didn't figure the cost of tools and
modern buildings high enough--there _was_ such a devil of a lot of
necessary things that we didn't figure on at all--and the consequence
was that we didn't put a big enough mortgage on the place. Nowhere near
what it would stand. And now that we want to put a second one on, Mr.
Stannard howls like a wolf."

The mere sound of the word mortgage made Mary's heart sink. She looked so
woebegone that Rush went on hastily.

"Oh, that'll come out in the wash. It's nothing to worry about really,
because even on the basis of a bigger investment than we had any idea of
making when we went in, it figures a peach of a profit. There's no
getting away from that. That's not the thing about it that's driving
Graham and me to drink."

He stopped on that phrase, not liking the sound of it, and in doubt about
asking her not to take it literally. She saw all that as plainly as if
she had been looking through an open window into his mind. He took
another deliberate sip of the brandy, instead, and then went on.

"Why, it's the way things don't happen; the way we can't get
anything done."

He did not see the sympathetic hand she stretched out to him; went back
to the big brandy glass instead, for another long luxurious inhalation
and a small sip or two. "It's partly our own fault, of course," he went
on, presently. "We've made some fool mistakes. But it isn't our mistakes
that are going to beat us, it's the damned bull-headed incompetence of
the so-called labor we've got to deal with."

He ruminated over that in silence for a minute or two. "They talk about
the inefficiency of the army," he exclaimed, "but I've been four years in
two armies and I'll say that if what we've found out at Hickory Hill is a
fair sample of civilian efficiency, I'll take the army way every time.
There are days when I feel as if I'd like to quit;