eyed men, he availed
himself of this discovery and was duly grateful.

Tom carried on a nominal fire-insurance business, but as a matter of
fact the tiny two-roomed frame structure that bore his painted sign was
nothing more or less than a loafing place for him and his rheumatic
friends, and a place in which the owner could spend the heat of the day
in a position of comfort to his stiff leg--that is to say, asleep in a
high-backed office chair, his feet propped upon his desk. It was here
that Tom could usually be found, and when one of those hateful
statements arrived from the East he merely roused himself, put on his
wide gray hat, limped around to the bank, and pledged more of his oil
royalties or signed another mortgage. What insurance policies he wrote
were brought to him by his old pals; the money derived there from he
sent on to "Bob" with love and an admonition to be a good girl and
study hard and hurry home, because he was dying to see her. This
office, by the way, no longer suited Tom; it was becoming too noisy and
he would have sold it and sought another farther out had it not been
mortgaged for more than it was worth. So, too, was the house where he
lived amid the dirt and disorder of all bachelor establishments.

Now Old Tom would have resented an accusation of indolence; the bare
implication of such a charge would have aroused his instant
indignation, and Tom Parker indignant was a man to shun. As a matter of
fact, he believed himself sadly overworked, and was forever complaining
about it.

The time came, however, when he was forced to shed his habit of
slothfulness as completely as a snake sheds its skin, and that was
during the week before "Bob's" arrival. Then, indeed, he swept and he
dusted, he mopped and he polished, he rubbed and he scrubbed, trying
his best to put the house in order. Never in all his life had he
labored as he did then, for four years of "batching" will make a bear's
nest out of the most orderly house, but he was jealous of his task and
he refused to share it with other hands. Pots and pans, rusty from
disuse or bearing the accumulated evidence of many hastily prepared
meals, he took out in the back yard and scrubbed with sand, leaving his
bony knuckles skinned and bleeding from the process; he put down a new
carpet in "Bob's" room, no easy task for a man with an ossified knee
joint--incidentally, the "damn thing" kept him awake for two nights
thereafter; he nailed up fresh curtain