"There!" was Orrin's whine, first to break the silence after Cap'n Jonah had departed. "What did I tell ye?" Sarah glared at her husband furiously. Tom licked his lips and doubled his fists. He could have pommeled his father and pommeled him well! "Aw--you----" he began, but helplessly. "Orrin Petty," said Sarah at last, "if you knew so much--and if you know so much now--why didn't you bring out your stores of wisdom before things come to this pass? Do you realize what it means? There's no fool like an old fool. If Uncle Jonah has taken a fancy to Pearly an' wills her his fortune, where'll we be, I want to know?" "Jest about here, or hereabout," responded Orrin, for once undaunted by his wife's sharp tongue. "But it looks like we won't have so much money as mebbe we would have had, if ye'd taken my advice and gone easy with your Uncle Jonah." "We don't know that he's got much of a fortune even now," said the woman sourly. Her quick mind was beginning to function again with its usual shrewdness. She had only been stunned by Cap'n Jonah's declaration. She was rapidly recovering. "We don't know----" "I knowed it all along," put in Tom, siding with his father for the nonce. "When Uncle Jonah give me that money----" "How much did he give you?" interrupted his mother sharply. "A twenty-dollar bill. Handed it out just as though it growed on bushes and he had a private patch of his own," chuckled Tom. "See that boy laugh!" exclaimed Orrin. "He ain't got no idee of how serious this may be for us all. If Cap'n Jonah wills away his prop'ty, whatever it may be, and makes a demand on your father's estate, Sarah, for principal and int'rest on that two thousand dollar note----" "You go fish!" exclaimed Sarah Petty, in exasperation. "If I ever did despise anybody it's them that always bring out their hindsight for their foresight. Looks like the aig's been broken; le's see if we can save the shell, anyway." "Of course, mebbe he ain't got much," said the cautious Orrin. "There you go again!" ejaculated his wife with disgust. "Leavin' a hole to creep out of backwards! I thank heaven I ain't the same kind of a fool you be, Orrin Petty, if I am one! "It looks to me like we'd fooled ourselves," went on Sarah practically. "But that don't mean we air sure to lose anything that's worth keeping. Uncle Jonah must be a mighty secret man--nothing at all like what father was. Father'd turn himself inside out jest as easy as you'd skin an eel. But Jonah Hand is secret--if he's got a fortune. He don't let no papers relating to it lie around where a body might see 'em. And he must have something to will, or he wouldn't have spoke up so free when he was mad, as he did jest now." "Hoh!" growled Tom. "If he _does_ give it all to Pearly----"