"'Ethel,' I said, 'please follow me carefully. I should like dearly to
cowhide him. and for the sake of argument we will consider it done Then
comes the lawsuit. Then I get up and say that I beat him because he made
me buy Standard Egg at 63 by telling me that his mother had some, when
really the old lady had been dead for fifteen years. When I think of it
in this way, I do not feel--'"

"I know,' interrupted Ethel, 'you are afraid of ridicule. All men are.'"

"Had Ethel insisted, I believe that I should have cowhided Mr. Beverly
for her sake. But before his return our destinies were brightened. Copper
had been found near Ethel's waste lands in Michigan, and the family
business man was able to sell the property for seven hundred thousand
dollars. He did this so promptly that I ventured to ask him if delay
might not have brought a greater price. 'Well', he said, 'I don't know.
You must seize these things. Blake and Beverly might have got tired
waiting."

"'Blake and Beverly!' I exclaimed 'So they made the purchase. It Mr.
Beverly back?'"

"'Just back. To tell the truth I don't believe they're finding so much
copper as they hoped.'"

"This turned out to be true. And I am not sure that the business man had
not known it all the while. 'We looked over the property pretty
thoroughly at the time of the Tamarack excitement,' he said. And in a few
days more, in fact, it was generally known that this land had returned to
its old state of not quite paying the taxes."