I will go,' but I guess even
What'shername would have given up at Oklahoma."

For three years, then, Sam Pardee's letters reeked of oil: wells,
strikes, gushers, drills, shares, outfits. It was early Oklahoma in the
rough. This one was getting five hundred a day out of his well. That one
had sunk forty thousand in his and lost out.

"Five hundred what?" Maxine asked. "Forty thousand what?"

"Dollars, I guess," Milly Pardee answered. "That's the way your father
always talks. I'd rather have twenty-five a week, myself, and know it's
coming without fail."

"I wouldn't. Where's the fun in that?"

"Fun! There's more fun in twenty-five a week in a pay envelope than in
forty thousand down a dry well."

Maxine was fifteen now. "I wish we could live with Father in Oklahoma. I
think it's wrong not to."

Milly Pardee was beginning to think so, too. Especially since her
husband's letters had grown rarer as the checks they contained had grown
larger. On his occasional trips back to Chicago he said nothing of their
joining him out there. He seemed to have grown accustomed to living
alone. Liked the freedom, the lack of responsibility. In sudden fright
and resolve Milly Pardee sold the furnishings of the four-room flat,
packed the peripatetic linen and silver, and joined a surprised and
rather markedly unenthusiastic husband in Okoochee, Oklahoma. A wife and
a fifteen-year-old daughter take a good deal of explaining on the part
of one who has posed for three years as a bachelor.

The first thing Maxine said as they rode (in a taxi) to the hotel, was:
"But the streets are paved!" Then, "But it's all electric lighted with
cluster lights!" And, in final and utter disgust, "Why, there's a movie
sign that says, 'The Perils of Pauline.' That was showing at the Elite
on Forty-third Street in Chicago just the night before we left."

Milly Pardee smiled grimly. "Palestine's paved, too," she observed.
"And they're probably running that same reel there next week."

Milly Pardee and her husband had a plain talk. Next day Sam Pardee
rented the two-story frame house in which, for years, the famous Pardee
dinners were to be served. But that came later. The house was rented
with the understanding that the rent was to be considered as payment
made toward final purchase. The three lived there in comfort. Maxine
went to the new pressed-brick, many-windowed high school. Milly Pardee
was happier than she had been in all her wedded life. Sam Par