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

Long before ten o'clock Saturday morning--the hour for sailing--Mr.
Hartley and his party were on board the big steamship