"MR. WILLIAM HODGES, SIR:--" she wrote. "I am very sorry to have to tell you that I have looked, but cannot find your oil well anywhere. I did find a man who had heard about it, but he said there wasn't any well at all like what the Boston man told you there was. He said it was a bad swindle and he knew many others who had lost their money, too, which I thought would please you. O dear, no, I don't mean that, of course. I only mean that you might like to know that others besides you hadn't known any more than to put money in it, too. (That doesn't sound quite right yet, but perhaps you know what I mean.) "I hope you won't feel too bad about it, Mr. Hodges. I saw some oil wells when we came through Beaumont, and I am quite sure you would not like them at all. They are not one bit like Bertha's aunt's well on her farm, with the bucket. In fact, they don't look like wells at all, and I never should have known what they were if Mr. Hartley had not told me. They are tall towers _standing up_ out of the ground instead of stone holes sunk down in the ground. (It is just as if you should call the cupola on your house your cellar--and you know how queer that would be!) I saw a lot of them--oil wells, not cupolas, I mean--and they looked more like a whole lot of little Eiffel Towers than anything else I can think of. (If you will get your grandson, Tony, to show you the Eiffel Tower in his geography, you will see what I mean.) Mr. Hartley says they _do_ bore for them--wells, I mean, not Eiffel Towers--and so I suppose they do go down before they go up. "I saw the wells on the way between San Antonio and New Orleans. One was on fire. (Just think of a well being on fire!) Of course we were riding through a most wonderful country, anyway. We saw a great many things growing besides oil wells, too, as you must know--rice, and cotton, and tobacco, and sugar cane, and onions, and quantities of other things. I picked some cotton bolls. (I spelt that right. This kind isn't b-a-ll.) I am sending you a few in a little box. It takes 75,000 of them to make one bale of cotton, so I'm afraid you couldn't make even a handkerchief out of these. "I am so sorry about the oil well, but I did the best that I could to find it. "Respectfully yours, "CORDELIA WILSON." CHAPTER XVIII THE GOLDEN HOURS