kitchen.

Gray retired to the patent rocker, Miss Briskow settled herself
upon a straight-backed chair and folded her capable hands in her
lap; an oppressive silence fell upon the room. Evidently the
duties of hostess lay with crushing weight upon the girl, for her
face became stony, her cheeks paled, her eyes glazed; the power of
speech completely failed her and she answered Gray with nods or
shakes of her head. The most that he could elicit from her were
brief "yeps" and "nopes." It was not unlike a "spirit reading," or
a ouija-board seance. He told himself, in terms of the oil fields,
that here was a dry well--that the girl was a "duster." Having
exhausted the usual commonplace topics in the course of a
monologue that induced no reaction whatever, he voiced a perfectly
natural remark about the wonder of sudden riches. He was, in a
way, thinking aloud of the changes wrought in drab lives like the
Briskows' by the discovery of oil. He was surprised when Allegheny
responded:

"Ma and me stand it all right, but it's an awful strain on Pa,"
said she.

"Indeed?"

The girl nodded. "He's got _more_ nutty notions."

Gray endeavored to learn the nature of Pa's recently acquired
eccentricities, but Allie was flushing and paling as a result of her
sudden excursion into the audible. Eventually she trembled upon the
verge of speech once more, then she took another desperate plunge.