“Don’t you remember that boy, Paul, that I met one night when you were talking about the lease?” “Gosh, son! You still a-frettin’ about that boy?” “I met Mrs. Groarty on the street yesterday, and she told me about the family; they’re in dreadful trouble, they’re going to lose their ranch to the bank because they can’t meet the interest on the mortgage, and Mrs. Groarty says she can’t think what they’ll do. You know Mrs. Groarty didn’t get any money herself—at least, she spent her bonus money for units, and she isn’t getting anything out of them, and has to live on what her husband gets as a night watchman.” “What you want to do about it?” “I want you to buy that mortgage, Dad; or anything, so the Watkinses can stay in their home. It’s wicked that people should be turned out like that, when they’re doing the best they can.” “There’s plenty o’ people bein’ turned out when they don’t meet their obligations, son.” “But when it’s not their fault, Dad?” “It would take a lot of bookkeeping to figger jist whose fault it is; and the banks don’t keep books that way.” Then seeing the protest in Bunny’s face, “You’ll find, son there’s a lot o’ harsh things in the world, that ain’t in your power to change. You’ll jist have to make up your mind to that, sooner or later.” “But Dad, there’s four children there, and three of them are girls, and where are they to go? Paul is away, and they haven’t any way to let him know what’s happened. Mrs. Groarty showed me a picture of them, Dad; they’re good, kind people, you can see they’ve never done anything but work hard. Honest, Dad, I couldn’t be happy if I didn’t help them. You said you’d buy me a car some day, and I’d rather you took the money and bought that mortgage. It’s less than a couple of thousand dollars, and that’s nothing to you.” “I know, son; but then you’ll get them on your hands—” “No, they’re not like that, they’re proud; Mrs. Groarty says they wouldn’t take money from you, any more than Paul would. But if you bought the mortgage from the bank, they couldn’t help that. Or you might buy the ranch, Dad, and rent it back to them. Paul says there’s oil on that ranch—at least his Uncle Eby had seen it on top of the ground.” “There’s thousands of ranches jist like that in California, son. Oil on top of the ground don’t mean anything special.” “Well, Dad, you’ve always said you wanted to try some wild-catting; and you know, that’s the only way you’ll ever get what you talk about—a whole big tract that belongs to you, with no royalties to pay, and nobody to butt in. So let’s take a chance on Paradise, and drive through there and camp out a few days and get some quail, and we’ll see what we think of it, and we’ll help those poor people, and give your kidneys a rest at the same time.” So Dad said all right; and he went away thinking to himself: “Gosh! Funny kid!” III