hould have been so quick to guess
anything of that kind about my father; but perhaps he had heard things
like that before. He took it as coolly as he generally took everything.

Corny was as red as a beet.

"Your father!" she exclaimed. "I don't believe it. I'll go this very
minute and see."

Rectus was right. The stingy hankerer after what Corny called four
inches of dirt was his father. Mr. Chipperton came up to us and talked
about the matter, and it was all as plain as daylight. When he found
that Mr. Colbert was the father of Rectus, Mr. Chipperton was very much
surprised, and he called no more names, although I am sure he had been
giving old Colbert a pretty disagreeable sort of a record. But he sat
down by Rectus, and talked to him as if the boy were his own father
instead of himself, and proved to him, by every law of property in
English, Latin, or Sanscrit, that the four inches of ground were
legally, lawfully, and without any manner of doubt, his own, and that it
would have been utterly and absolutely impossible for him to have built
his house one inch outside of his own land. I whispered to Rectus that
the house might have swelled, but he didn't get a chance to put in the
suggestion.

Rectus had to agree to all Mr. Chipperton said--or, at least, he
couldn't differ with him,--for he didn't know anything on earth about
the matter, and I guess he was glad enough when he got through. I'm sure
I was. Rectus didn't say anything except that he was very sorry that the
Chipperton family had to go home, and then he walked off to his room.

In about half an hour, when I went upstairs, I found Rectus had just
finished a letter to his father.

"I guess that'll make it all right," he said, and he handed me the
letter to read. It was a strictly business letter. No nonsense about the
folks at home. He said that was the kind of business letter his father
liked. It ran like this:

DEAR FATHER: Mr. Chipperton has told me about your
suing him. If he really has set his house over on
four inches of your lot, I wish you would let it
stand there. I don't care much for him, but he has
a nice wife and a pleasant girl, and if you go on
suing him the whole lot of them will leave here
to-morrow, and they're about the only people I
know, except Gordon. If you want to, you can take
a foot off any one of my three lots, and that
ought