or twice
during the summer, can tend from forty to eighty acres.

It was such an astounding bargain that Reedy's pink face grew a little
pale, and he moistened his lips as he figured. He was trying to
reassure himself that it would be dead easy to borrow the other
$18,000. He did not have it. In truth, he had only two hundred left
in the bank. He thought of Tom Barton and two of the banks from whom
he had already borrowed. They did not seem promising. Then he thought
of Jim Crill, and the pinkness came slowly back to his face. He smiled
doggishly as he picked up the phone, called El Centro, and asked for
Mrs. Evelyn Barnett.

Mrs. Evelyn Barnett sat on the porch shaded by a wistaria vine, her
feet discreetly side by side on the floor, her hands primly folded in
her lap; her head righteously erect, as one who could wear her widow's
weeds without reproach, having been faithful to the very last ruffle of
her handsome dress to the memory of her deceased.

She had insisted on taking Uncle Crill from the hotel, which was
ruining his digestion, and making a home for him. She had leased an
apartment bungalow, opening on a court, and with the aid of three
servants had, at great personal sacrifice, managed to give Uncle Crill
a "real home." True, Uncle was not in it very much, but it was there
for him to come back to.

"Uncle," she had said, piously, showing him the homelike wonders that
three servants had been able to achieve in the six rooms, "in the
crudities of this horrid, uncouth country, we must keep up the
refinements to which we were accustomed in the East." The old
gentleman had grunted, remembering what sort of refinements they had
been accustomed to, but made no outward protests at being thus frillily
domesticated after ten years in the Texas oil fields.

And as Mrs. Barnett sat on the porch this morning, fully and carefully
dressed, awaiting the result of that telephone message from Calexico,
she watched with rank disapproval her neighbours to the right and left.
It was quite hot already and Mrs. Borden on the right had come out on
the porch, dressed with amazing looseness of wrapper, showing a very
liberal opening at the throat, and stood fanning herself with a
newspaper. Mrs. Cramer on the left, having finished her sweeping, had
come out on the porch also, and in garments that indicated no padding
whatever dropped into a rocking chair, crossed her legs, made a dab at
her loosely piled hair to see