He sighed, and resumed the subject under discussion. His manner had changed somewhat, however. He spoke in the persuasive, frank, "he's-a-good-fellow-and-'twill-all-be-well" tones which he reserved for directors' boards, stockholders' meetings, and like courts of last resort, when things unpleasant had to be told and he was the one to tell them. It should be said in all justice that he rarely side-stepped these meetings, as he might have done, and allowed the unpleasantnesses to disclose themselves through others. Nobody could say that Richard Darcy was a coward. "Well, about this little business affair of ours, Dollykins--Of course the property was never large, though properly invested it might have brought us in a decent income instead of the trifle Mary was content with. The merest pittance I assure you, the merest pittance!" Joan nodded. She had heard before about the mereness of the pittance. "Often during my wife's lifetime I took occasion to point this out to her. The question of securities and investments being one to which I have devoted the greater part of my business career, I think I may say without undue vanity that I am qualified to give advice on such matters! But Mary had a certain sentimental reluctance about changing investments which her father had made for her, and sentiment is a thing which I am always able to respect." ("Good for mother!" said Joan to herself.) "However, after her death--" he paused to pay his Mary the tribute of a sincere though dramatic sigh--"I began at once to look about for a means of providing my little girl with more affluence than had hitherto been at my disposal. The best," he smiled, patting her hand, "is none too good for my Dollykins! And an opportunity shortly presented itself, a quite exceptional opportunity, not only of increasing our income materially, but of assisting to develop the resources of my native commonwealth." He expanded suddenly with public spirit. "What a State! Fortunes have been made here, but nothing compared with the fortunes which shall be made. People have dared to call us a 'pauper State'--'pauper,' if you please!--with wealth at our command, untouched, unguessed resources lying just beneath the surface of this beautiful soil, which would make Aladdin's cave look like--like--" "Thirty cents," supplied Joan, in an anxious effort to get to the point. "I know, Father!--but what did you buy with the money?" "Oil-fields!" he said largely. "Oil-fields! Or, to be exact, stock in a company formed for the purpose of purchasing oil-fields, in which by good chance I happened to be let in on the ground floor (as we say in commercial parlance, Dollykins. It is not an expression I should care to hear you use.) You are the part possessor of something like one thousand acres of virgin Kentucky soil!" He leaned back in his chair and beamed on her. "Am I?" said Joan dubiously. "It sounds promising."