His eye lit on Hardy. "Look here,"
he cried, in desperation, "ain't there no way out of this thing? It was my
money that bought this ranch, you know. And everybody knows it! The last
ten thousand dollars I had in the world!" There was a sob in his voice on
the last words.
Hardy looked at him, but with no pity in his gaze. "That's your lookout,
Smith. Everybody for himself--that's my motto."
"And you'd throw me, old and sick, a invalid, out into the streets?" Uncle
Henry whined. No one could get more pathos into his tones than Uncle Henry
when he wanted to do so.
"No; I'd let you wheel yourself out," Jasper Hardy, again the
literal-minded Hardy, said. It was one of the meanest remarks that even he
had ever made.
"Say, ain't you got no heart at all?" Uncle Henry wanted to know.
"I used to have; but it cost me too much money," was Hardy's explanation
and vindication. "Sentiment? Bosh!" And he made a gesture of deep disgust.
Uncle Henry wanted to put a curse on him! "Well, all I hope is that some
day you'll go broke and they'll bounce you out into Main Street!" He
chuckled in his chair.
"The line forms on the left," the imperturbable Hardy said. "You're the
fifth that's had that hope this year.
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