s head,
opens its beak, flirts its tail, and utters the most angelic song. It
must have cost a fortune. Couldn't you _love_ a man who would think of
a present like that?"

"Hm-m! Could _you_?"

"Oh, I'm joking, of course," "Bob" said, seriously. "We are merely
business associates, Mr. Gray and I, but he has the faculty of taking
his personality into his business, and that's why I know he is bound to
make a great success."

"Some day," Nelson said, with an effort at lightness, "when we have
finished with this infernal oil excitement and the fever has subsided,
perhaps I'll have a chance to--well, to play ladies' man. It won't last
long--"

"I'm sure it won't," laughed the girl. "You'd never make a go of it,
Henry."

"I mean this boom won't last. These fools think it will, but it won't.
While it does last, we busy men have no time for anything else, no
chance to think of anything, no room in our minds--" The speaker stared
gloomily into space. He shook his head. "When a fellow is worried about
important matters, he neglects the little things."

"To me that is the tragedy of this oil excitement. It devours
everything fine in us. I wonder if the 'little things' of life aren't,
after all, the most important. Mind you, I'm not hinting--I don't want
your attentions--I wouldn't have time for them, anyhow, for I'm just as
feverish as anybody else. But in the midst of all these new concerns,
these sudden millions, this overnight success, our ambitious schemes,
we are forgetting the things that really count. Gentleness, courtesy,
love, home, children: they're pretty big, Henry. Candy and roses and
yellow canaries, too. But "--the speaker rose, briskly--"I didn't come
here to talk about them; I came here to sell you an oil well. Sorry you
can't take it."

When she had gone Nelson sat in a frowning study for some time. So, it
was not all a bad dream. What could be Gray's object in buying acreage
adjoining his? Was it faith in his, Nelson's, judgment, a desire to
ride to success on the tail of his enemy's kite, or did it mean a war
of offsets, drilling operations the instant a well came in? More likely
the latter, if the maniac really meant what he had said. That promised
to be an expensive and a hazardous undertaking on Gray's part; that was
playing the game on a scale too big for the fellow's limited resources,
and yet--it might be well to study the maps. Yes, and it was like
Gray's effrontery to pay deliberate court to "